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

German historian Roeck (Florence 1900: The Quest for Arcadia; Civic Culture and Everyday Life in Early Modern Germany) presents a thorough and wide-ranging history of the European Renaissance, aiming to explain why it happened when and where it did. He starts with the lengthy 2,000-year cultural background that built up to the era that would be called the Renaissance, then brings it together with the more immediate factors that precipitated and enabled the surge of interest and investment in the arts and sciences in the 14th century. He makes the case that the Renaissance was localized in Western Europe because its competing cities led to relatively open societies where even middle-class men (including Leonard da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Gallileo) could rise. The book covers the many positive outcomes of the Renaissance, but Roeck also gives due attention to the negative aspects of the societies in which the movement was inculcated and flourished, which results in a balanced overview. The book is lengthy; it spends 350 pages on the history that led to the Renaissance, before arriving at the Renaissance itself. Readers who only wish to learn about the Renaissance may want to skip the first third of the book before tackling the remaining 600-plus pages that focus on multiple aspects of the Renaissance, not just the political and religious elements.