The World at First Light

The Renaissance was a revolution that forever changed first Europe and then the rest of the world. In this grandly written book, Bernd Roeck unfurls an impressive panorama of this restless, dramatic epoch. At the same time, on the level of global history, he explains why this unique concentration of earthshattering ideas, spectacular discoveries, and historic radical changes happened in Europe. To reveal the roots of the Renaissance, Bernd Roeck looks far back into the Middle Ages and Antiquity—and far beyond the borders of Europe. With sharp analysis and captivating descriptions, he recreates this epoch right before the reader’s eyes—the incredible art that was created under Italian skies and the ideas of Humanists as well as the religious wars and the beginning of the subjugation of foreign continents. He tells the stories of merchants and poets, emperors, and popes, clever women and monstrous men, of the greats of their time and the lesser folk who fought disease and hunger far away from the palaces. Finally, this magnum opus demonstrates that the innovations of the Renaissance didn’t just create dream destinations for beauty and intellect, but also the very foundations of our modern world. Bernd Roeck has been a professor of modern history at the University of Zurich since 1999 and is one of the most knowledgeable experts on the European Renaissance. C.H.Beck has published several of his other works, including Als wollt die Welt schier brechen. Eine Stadt im Zeitalter des Dreißigjährigen Krieges (As if the World Wanted to Break. A City in the Age of the Thirty Years’ War, 1991), Florenz 1900. Die Suche nach Arkadien (Florence 1900. The Quest for Aracadia, 2004) und Mörder, Maler und Mäzene. Piero della Francescas “Geißelung” (Murderers, Painters, and Patrons. Piero della Francesca’s “The Flagellation,” 2010).