The World at First Light

A New History of the Renaissance

Bernd Roeck, Patrick Baker

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English

Princeton University Pres
01 September 2025

History; European history; Early modern history: c 1450 to c 1700

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A magisterial history of the Renaissance and the birth of the modern world

The cultural epoch we know as the Renaissance emerged at a certain time and in a certain place. Why then and not earlier? Why there and not elsewhere? In The World at First Light, historian Bernd Roeck explores the cultural and historical preconditions that enabled the European Renaissance. Roeck shows that the rediscovery of ancient knowledge, including the science of the medieval Arab world, played a critical role in shaping the beginnings of Western modernity. He explains that the Renaissance emerged in a part of Europe where competing states and cities formed relatively open societies. Most of the era's creative minds

from Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to Copernicus and Galileo

came from the middle classes. The art of arguing flowered, the basso continuo to intellectual and cultural breakthroughs.

Roeck argues that two revolutions shaped the Renaissance: a media revolution, triggered by Gutenberg's invention of movable type

which itself was a driving force behind the scientific revolution

and the advent of modern science. He also reports on the dark side of the era

hatred of Jews, witch panic, religious wars, and the atrocities of colonialism. In a series of meditative counterfactuals, Roeck considers other cultural rebirths throughout the first millennium, from the Islamic empire to the Carolingians, examining why the epic developments of the Renaissance took place in the West and not elsewhere. The complicated legacy of the Renaissance, he shows, encompasses the art of critical thinking as learned from the ancients, the emergence of the modern state, and the genesis of democracy.

By: Bernd Roeck
Translated by: Patrick Baker
Imprint: Princeton University Pres
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780691183831
ISBN 10: 069118383X
Pages: 1184
Publication Date: 01 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Bernd Roeck has been professor of modern history at the University of Zurich and director of the German Centre for Venetian Studies in Venice. He is the author of Florence 1900: The Quest for Arcadia, Civic Culture and Everyday Life in Early Modern Germany, and other books.