Ada Palmer

The Renaissance is one of the most studied and celebrated eras of history. Spanning the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of modernity, it has come to symbolise the transformative rebirth of knowledge, art, culture, and political thought in Europe. For the last two hundred years, historians have struggled to describe what makes this famous golden age unique....

The final instalment in Ada Palmer's award-winning, critically acclaimed Terra Ignota series. For years, the leaders of the Hive clandestinely committed terrible deeds in order to maintain an outward semblance of utopian stability. But the facade could last only so long. Global travel and worldwide abundance may have tempered humanity's darkest inclinations, but conflict remains deeply rooted in the human...

After its rediscovery in 1417, Lucretius's Epicurean didactic poem De Rerum Natura threatened to supply radicals and atheists with the one weapon unbelief had lacked in the Middle Ages: good answers. Scholars could now challenge Christian patterns of thought by employing the theory of atomistic physics, a sophisticated system that explained natural phenomena without appeal to divine participation, and argued...

The Renaissance is one of the most studied and celebrated eras of history. Spanning the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of modernity, it has come to symbolise the transformative rebirth of knowledge, art, culture, and political thought in Europe. For the last two hundred years, historians have struggled to describe what makes this famous golden age unique....