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Ada Palmer’s title doesn’t cover everything that’s in this book. In fact, what the book covers is probably too large for any one title, and it is to her credit that it isn’t too large for any one book.

First note: this book is written in a very atypical tone. Instead of just laying things out, describing events, sources, relationships, with a third-person voice that minimizes the author, Palmer takes a very personal, first person voice here. This annoyed me at first, but does allow some very useful bits. Notably, she talks about the work of history, and how theories are established and rejected over time. You know, just like in ‘hard’ science. Also, she talks about her own experiences in academia; a notable early bit is about going to a symposium and noting the different populations in different panels. This also leads into a discussion of how the questions we start with determine a lot of the research and writing done, and how gender segregated various parts have been (though it is getting better).

She also leverages the first person to make all sorts of current “meme” comparisons, which may end up “dating” this book well before its time. But, she also works in an apt comparisons, like the boardgame Siena which she rates as the best Renaissance-themed game she knows of for its depiction of Fourteenth Century social climbing. I’m afraid I’ve not played it, but I know I’ve heard the name before, and it sounds like the goals are properly aligned with the history it wants to show.

This is after some early admonitions to not trust the author, at least not too much. Palmer is very up front about the fact that there will be other books on the same shelf as hers that have different conclusions, and the bulk of them will be just as valid as hers. This was a nice early bit of expectation management, and does get a lot of follow up, for the first half of the book at least, about the different answers that can be found on a number of subjects or people.

This flows back into the talk of theories, namely, “just what is the Renaissance?” There’s some time spent with various definitions in the middle and just how they aren’t satisfying for various reasons. However, there’s the seed of an answer all along: the Renaissance was a self-conscious attempt to create a golden age. A lot of our current thoughts actually go back good advertising that started at that time. And the eventual definitions late in the book do relate to that bit of propaganda and its goals.

The longest part of the book is a series of fifteen mini-biographies (some famous, some quite obscure) that all intersect and deal with Florence. The latter is almost an odd choice, as she’s already shown that the association of the Renaissance with Florence is more self-fulfilling prophecy than actuality; but there’s a reason why it happened in the first place. But the real point is to move back and forth over a few decades, coming at some of the same events from different angles. I don’t think this works out as well as hoped, and it is decidedly the densest part of the book.

It’s not bad, mind you, just not as good as the rest.

Then we get into some of the current (or close to) historical thought on the Renaissance, and current definitions. This leads us back to exclusions, and figuring it out by what did it turn into and how. Eleventh Century philosopher Peter Abelard shows up early, and then becomes a recurrent figure here; so much so that his presence is verbed for the last parts of the book. Not only was the Renaissance a self-proclaimed effort to create a golden age, but the major (intellectual) project was to find forgotten and mistranslated wisdom from prior ages and integrate it all into one syncretic world view that would naturally solve the world’s ills. What could go wrong?

Well, it didn’t work, for one. The advice the umanisti gave didn’t help, the better known the ancient writers became, the more evident their contradictions became, and the more obvious their lacks in the face of all the new things coming from across the Atlantic became. From there we get a whirlwind tour of philosophical thought that could become a new Connections miniseries.

The book largely ends with a discussion her own classroom exercise dealing with the crisis year (in Italy) of 1492. It’s the type of thing that more classes really should have, as a practical demonstration that, among other things, people haven’t changed that much. The various members of the class all have roles of people around the papal election that year, and it’s aftermath, the First Italian War. There’s plenty of room for things to be different, but the pressures are such that someone invades Italy in the aftermath. Further philosophical discussion brings all of this to a relation with current events.

It’s an amazingly wide-ranging book. Just looking at the table of contents (“19. Rome: The Eternal Problem City”) will give you some idea of the ride you’re in for. And it leverages being unusual to very good effect.