Buy This

History

The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance

    Translated by
  • Patrick Baker

A magisterial history of the Renaissance and the birth of the modern world

ebook (PDF via app)

30% off with code PUP30

Sale Price:
$31.50/拢26.60
Price:
$45.00/拢38.00
ISBN:
Published:
Jun 3, 2025
Copyright:
2025
Illus:
32 color + 83 b/w illus.
  • Audio and ebooks (EPUB and PDF) purchased from this site must be accessed on the 91桃色 app. After purchasing, you will receive an email with instructions to access your purchase.
    About audio and ebooks
  • Request Exam Copy

The cultural epoch we know as the Renaissance emerged at a certain time and in a certain place. Why then and not earlier? Why there and not elsewhere? In The World at First Light, historian Bernd Roeck explores the cultural and historical preconditions that enabled the European Renaissance. Roeck shows that the rediscovery of ancient knowledge, including the science of the medieval Arab world, played a critical role in shaping the beginnings of Western modernity. He explains that the Renaissance emerged in a part of Europe where competing states and cities formed relatively open societies. Most of the era鈥檚 creative minds鈥攆rom Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to Copernicus and Galileo鈥攃ame from the middle classes. The art of arguing flowered, the basso continuo to intellectual and cultural breakthroughs.

Roeck argues that two revolutions shaped the Renaissance: a media revolution, triggered by Gutenberg鈥檚 invention of movable type鈥攚hich itself was a driving force behind the scientific revolution鈥攁nd the advent of modern science. He also reports on the dark side of the era鈥攈atred of Jews, witch panic, religious wars, and the atrocities of colonialism. In a series of meditative counterfactuals, Roeck considers other cultural rebirths throughout the first millennium, from the Islamic empire to the Carolingians, examining why the epic developments of the Renaissance took place in the West and not elsewhere. The complicated legacy of the Renaissance, he shows, encompasses the art of critical thinking as learned from the ancients, the emergence of the modern state, and the genesis of democracy.

Ideas Podcast: The World at First Light

Bernd Roeck on The World at First Light

Awards and Recognition

  • A New Yorker Best Book We Read So Far