A fascinating look at how ideas ripple and spread.

Walter Isaacson

Generous, brilliant, and inviting, Ada Palmer's Inventing the Renaissance is a triumph... this is a work of deep erudition worn lightly but excitingly that offers a history of the Renaissance with a unique and personal imprint. If you are a scholar of the period, you will find new insights and interpretations, and if you are coming to the Renaissance for the first time, you will find an engaging and eloquent companion in Ada Palmer.

Professor Christopher S. Celenza, Johns Hopkins University

Inventing the Renaissance does something magical: it manages to take a tightly-held conviction (that there was a thing in European history called 'the Renaissance'), dismantle it with humor and intelligence, then put it back together as something different and more true to the past itself. But maybe more importantly, Palmer's expertise and storytelling helps us better understand how golden ages are imagined, and why rejecting those invented constructions of the past provides us with hope as we confront our own contemporary world. As she says herself: 'we can do better than the Renaissance.'

Professor Matthew Gabriele, Virginia Tech

An urgent corrective to modern myths about an ill-used past. Palmer has written a vital, absorbing and incredibly entertaining history of the so-called Renaissance. Challenging conventional wisdom, Inventing the Renaissance delves deep into the historical circumstances that have given rise to one of the most pervasive and frustrating narratives of the early modern period. It is a must read for all history enthusiasts.

Eleanor Janega

Palmer is one of the most fascinating writers, thinkers, performers, and speakers I know. This is the book for every history nerd in your life, and also a magic artifact with the power to transform normies into history nerds.

Cory Doctorow

This is a work of supreme importance, in that it takes a fascinating period of human history and brings the reader to confront many issues that are often overlooked, including the prejudices of our own views. Profound scholarship and imaginative powers support what is clearly the author's aim: to help the reader exercise critical thinking on the material before them. While this may be primarily intended for younger history students, its lively narration and perceptive analysis bring joy and delight to seasoned scholars too.

Valery Rees