{"title":"Ada Palmer","description":"Ada Palmer is associate professor of early modern European history and the College at the University of Chicago. She is the author of many books, including Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance and the award-winning Terra Ignota series of novels.","products":[{"product_id":"inventing-the-renaissance-the-myth-of-a-golden-age-paperback","title":"Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eNew Yorker \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eBest Book of 2025\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn irreverent new take on the Renaissance, which reveals it as anything but Europe's golden age.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFrom the darkness of a plagued and war-torn Middle Ages, the Renaissance (we're told) heralds the dawning of a new world--a halcyon age of art, prosperity, and rebirth. Hogwash! or so says award-winning novelist and historian Ada Palmer. In \u003ci\u003eInventing the Renaissance\u003c\/i\u003e, Palmer turns her witty and irreverent eye on the fantasies we've told ourselves about Europe's not-so-golden age, myths she sets right with sharp clarity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePalmer's Renaissance is altogether desperate. Troubled by centuries of conflict, she argues, Europe looked to a long-lost Roman Empire (even its education practices) to save it from unending war. Later historians met their own political challenges with a similarly nostalgic vision, only now they looked to the Renaissance and told a partial story. To right this wrong, Palmer offers fifteen provocative portraits of Renaissance men and women (some famous, some obscure) whose lives reveal a far more diverse, fragile, and wild Renaissance than its glowing reputation suggests.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368971796703,"sku":"9780226852591","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/QZ2vWz2mfq9780226852591.webp?v=1789135976"},{"product_id":"too-like-the-lightning-book-one-of-terra-ignota-paperback","title":"Too Like the Lightning: Book One of Terra Ignota - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the winner of the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Ada Palmer's 2017 \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eCompton Crook Award-winning \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003epolitical science fiction, \u003ci\u003eToo Like the Lightning, \u003c\/i\u003eventures into a human future of extraordinary originality\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer--a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competion is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAnd in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life... \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eTerra Ignota\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e1. \u003ci\u003eToo Like the Lightning\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2. \u003ci\u003eSeven Surrenders\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e3. \u003ci\u003eThe Will to Battle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e4. Perhaps the Stars\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51370073063647,"sku":"9780765378019","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/Mz9ac3O5qo9780765378019.webp?v=1789150302"},{"product_id":"perhaps-the-stars-paperback","title":"Perhaps the Stars - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the 2017 John W. Campbell Award Winner for Best Writer, Ada Palmer's \u003ci\u003ePerhaps the Stars\u003c\/i\u003e is the final book of the Hugo Award-shortlisted Terra Ignota series.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWorld Peace turns into global civil war. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn the future, the leaders of Hive nations--nations without fixed location--clandestinely committed nefarious deeds in order to maintain an outward semblance of utopian stability. But the facade could only last so long. The comforts of effortless global travel and worldwide abundance may have tempered humanity's darkest inclinations, but conflict remains deeply rooted in the human psyche. All it needed was a catalyst, in form of special little boy to ignite half a millennium of repressed chaos. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNow, war spreads throughout the globe, splintering old alliances and awakening sleeping enmities. All transportation systems are in ruins, causing the tyranny of distance to fracture a long-united Earth and threaten to obliterate everything the Hive system built. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWith the arch-criminal Mycroft nowhere to be found, his successor, Ninth Anonymous, must not only chronicle the discord of war, but attempt to restore order in a world spiraling closer to irreparable ruin. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe fate of a broken society hangs in the balance. Is the key to salvation to remain Earth-bound or, perhaps, to start anew throughout the far reaches of the stars?","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51374251114719,"sku":"9780765378071","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/wWyoLctwBx9780765378071.webp?v=1789175632"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/ada-palmer.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}