Everything Old is New Again
Inventing the Renaissance
By Ada Palmer
29 May, 2025
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Ada Palmer’s 2025 Inventing the Renaissance is a popular history book.
The title seems clear… until you ask in what sense “inventing” is intended. Are we talking the late Medieval Italians? or historians who create the frameworks we use to discuss history? But the game is given away by the subtitle: The Myth of a Golden Age.
Myths are created by outsiders at a later date. This book is as much historiography as history.
But first, a digression.