Book Review: Inventing the Renaissance
I recently finished reading Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age by Ada Palmer published by University of Chicago Press in 2025 and rightful given a spot on the Best Books of 2025 list compiled by The New Yorker. At 768 pages, this dense yet entertaining book required nearly 20 hours of reading time and gave me a better understanding of the Renaissance, European history, ethics, and modern historical research. While not for the faint of heart and occasionally repetitive, this book is a one-stop-shop as an introduction to the time period and would be an excellent textbook for honors college undergraduates. The follow review gives only a taste of the full book.
The book opens by framing the Renaissance as a period that was simultaneously “great and terrible.” Rather than a single, linear story, Palmer followed the lives of fifteen individuals and provided extra context along the way. Her approach highlights how perspectives differ depending on whose story is told and challenges simplistic comparisons to modern crises, like the 2020 pandemic. Questions such as whether COVID could lead to a “golden age”, echoing the Black Death’s connection to the Renaissance, demand a nuanced answer rather than a flat “No.” Palmer emphasizes that while the Renaissance left behind cultural treasures, life during the era was not necessarily golden for those living it. She likens the period to The Wizard of Oz: dazzling on the surface, yet “desperate for us not to look behind the curtain”. These fun references paired with idiosyncratic punctuation and clever jokes make the dense and lengthy book easier to read. Besides pushing back against the notion of a “golden age”, Palmer explained that the Renaissance wasn’t a fixed set of years but an idea or lengthy period of transformation between medieval and modern, shaped as much by myths and later interpretations as by the people who lived it. In Palmer’s own words, “the Renaissance was, like the Middle Ages loooooong”.
The central character in Palmer’s book is Niccolò Machiavelli, or “Old Nick” as she calls him. He anchors the Renaissance not just as a historical figure but as a lens on Florence and its turbulent politics. He championed ideas like a citizen militia, witnessed invasions and the return of the violent and powerful Medici family, and ultimately endured false accusations and exile. His book The Prince is often misunderstood as endorsing bad behavior but was actually a careful manual for stabilizing power, which was shared only with trusted friends and potential patrons during his lifetime. Additionally, Palmer situates Florence in a broader Renaissance world of wealthy but vulnerable city-states, powerful families, and fragile papal authority. She also introduced the humanist ideals from Petrarch and the studia humanitatis, the most popular education system at the time, which would be extensively examined throughout the book.
Palmer introduces vocabulary that is important to understanding her study of the Renaissance. For example, historiography is the study of how past historians have judged a period, while an “X-Factor” is an opinion of what made the Renaissance “good” after the Middle Ages was “bad”. When explaining how x-factors worked, Palmer described a common misconception about Norsemen (Vikings) being unable to survive in Greenland; they had stubbornly stuck to their European foodways and refused to eat fish. However, new interpretations of archaeological discoveries revealed plenty of fishing equipment in midden piles, showing that the Vikings not only ate fish but fed it to their animals.
The term Renaissance itself is a modern invention popularized in the 19th century by historians like Jacob Burckhardt and based on the Italian word rinascita meaning “rebirth”. Academics described the Renaissance as the birth of individualism and modernity, where people became aware of their own power and the potential to reshape the world. German scholars divided the study of the Renaissance between geistesgeschichte or intellectual history and kulturgeschichte or cultural history, which includes art, politics, and daily life. The scholars argued over the X-factor that defined the Renaissance, which Palmer divided into several categories, including:
- Secular Humanism: This combined the concept of secularism (coined by George Holyoake in 1851) and humanism (first appearing in 1808; from humanismus, coined by Friedrich Niethammer in the 19th century). Renaissance scholars were experts in studia humanitatis, which included grammar and logic, and were called umanisti.
- Proto-Democracy: Florence was a city-state with a government ruled by “the Nine Dudes in the Tower”, or temporarily elected men from elite families.
- Proto-Capitalism: Modern banking, finance, and economics began in Florence. This city is centered in many studies of the Renaissance because its art and archives were preserved. The city never was never destroyed in war, unlike most other Italian cities.
The X-factors of the Renaissance influenced the lives of the people, whether they were powerful politicians, government workers, or largely unremembered by history. Palmer took care to share a wide range of voices, including:
- Lorenzo di Piero de Medici: “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” the patriarch of a powerful merchant family and unofficial leader of Florence from 1469 until his death in 1492. He managed the Medici bank, dowry funds, and alliances while keeping Florence politically stable and providing his grandchildren with the best available education.
- Ippolita Maria Visconti Sforza: a highly educated Renaissance noblewoman with political connections from her marriage to the crown prince of Naples. She was a close friend of Lorenzo de Medici and shows how elite women had cultural and diplomatic influence.
- Lucrezia Borgia: another highly educated Renaissance noblewoman whose family dynasty collapsed during her lifetime, despite her position as Duchess of Ferra.
- Camilla Bartolini Rucelli: a powerful, educated Florentine woman who rejected a umenista education to become a Dominican nun and mystic. She was tied to the Savonarolan reform or “Last Republic”, a period when her prophetic visions influenced the government of Florence.
- Julia the Sibyl: a 17th century clairvoyant lady-in-waiting to King/Queen Kristina of Sweden. Both women were considered masculine by late Renaissance standards.
As I said earlier, this review is but a taste of the book. Palmer also discussed how religion and philosophy was radically different in the Renaissance than in the modern era, from concepts like what made a person an atheist and how the world was made to virtue politics, Machiavellianism, and the Enlightenment. All of the writing was excellently researched, balanced facts with humor, and provided resources to learn more. My chief complaint is that the scope seemed unclear. The book spoke of inventing the Renaissance but had a significant amount of material from before and after the period. Palmer might have written two or three books on the many topics and made a series: People of the Renaissance, X-Factors of the Renaissance, Religion and Philosophy of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, for example. If you choose to embark on this book, be sure to pace yourself on the enjoyable journey.
Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age by Ada PalmerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars