Inventing the Renaissance the myth of a golden age

In this new book, the award-winning novelist and renowned historian Ada Palmer seeks to dismantle the myth of the Renaissance as a "golden age" compared to the plague- and war-ridden Middle Ages. For those who inhabited what we now think of as the Renaissance, Palmer argues, it was "a darker, grimmer age than the 'dark ages' that preceded it." The book, then, is as much about the real Renaissance as it is about our constructions of it, taking a close look at how the myth of the Renaissance as a golden age came about. Palmer ably shows how this myth was constructed for different political reasons at different times, and she contrasts it with the lived reality of the actual Renaissance, which she sees as a troubled period defined by the attempt to end centuries of war and conflict by way of a revival of the educational aims and methods of ancient Rome. The author peppers her book with fifteen mini-biographies ranging from famous figures-including Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Lucrezia Borgia-to lesser-known ones, examining why history remembers some characters over others and showing in detail how different figures struggled with the trials and tribulations of their time.