Author: Tim Graczewski
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The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (2004) by Russell Shorto
The North Atlantic maritime powers of the sixteenth century were determined to break the stranglehold that Spain and Portugal had on the trade routes to Asia in the southern hemisphere. They were convinced that there was a northwest passage along the northeastern seaboard of North America. It was just a matter of finding it. Roughly…
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Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century & the Dawn of the Global World (2008) by Timothy Brook
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) was a German-Swiss painter who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. One of his most famous paintings – “The Ambassadors”(1533) – hangs today in the National Gallery in London. It is rich in symbolism of life in the late Renaissance. The two ambassadors stand in front of a table filled…
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The Last Days of the Renaissance & the March to Modernity (2006) by Theodore Rabb
“In general, endings always remain unclear.” So says Theodore K. Rabb, professor of Renaissance and early modern Europe at Princeton University, in “The Last Days of the Renaissance & the March to Modernity” (2006), a crisp but powerful essay on the generally neglected historical topic: “What came after the Renaissance?” Several suggestions have been made.…
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Champlain’s Dream (2009) by David Hackett Fischer
Samuel Champlain was born in the Atlantic coastal village of Brouage in 1574 during a time of religious upheaval in France (nine religious wars between 1562 and 1598). Fischer speculates that Champlain was baptized and born Protestant and then converted to Catholicism, to which he remained deeply devoted for the rest of his life. “[Champlain]…
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Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture (2000) by Ross King
Ross King has a PhD in eighteenth century English Literature from York University in Canada, yet he has made a name for himself as a popular historian and biographer of the Italian Renaissance. Over the past two decades, he has written lively biographical narratives of artist Michelangelo (2003), bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci (2021), and architect…
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The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance (2021) by Ross King
Fifteenth century Florence was known primarily for its wool-making and its banking (and eventually its art). In “The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance” (2021) pop historian Ross King argues that handcrafted book–making was another valued and important skill the Florentines were renowned for. Vespasiano da Bisticci (1433-1498) was…
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Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (2003) by Ross King
Ross King is one of the few writers who makes learning about the Italian Renaissance fun and easy. Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (2003) tells the story of the most famous vaulted fresco on earth – Michelangelo’s painting of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling from 1508 to 1512. Michelangelo was not an easy man to get…
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Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance (2022) by Joseph Luzzi
There aren’t many histories of the Italian Renaissance written for a lay audience, besides a few excellent examples by Ross King. Joseph Luzzi is a literature professor at Bard College in upstate New York. I get the sense that he wrote “Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance” (2022) just for…
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Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth Century Florence (1965) by Felix Gilbert
“Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth Century Florence” (1965) by Felix Gilbert examines the contrasting political philosophies and historical methodologies of two prominent Renaissance thinkers: Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) and Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540). Gilbert places both figures within the intellectual and political turmoil of Renaissance Italy in the first decades of the sixteenth century,…
What's Tim Reading Now? 