Recommend a book on European history, c. 1450-1550

The Renaissance and the Age of Exploration were happening simultaneously – which, when you think about it, is really odd. Why did intellectual ferment go in one direction in Italy and in a completely different direction in Spain and Portugal? I’ve read a bit on both eras separately, but would be interested in a book that pulled together a big-picture look at what was going on in Europe during that period.

Can anyone recommend something?

TIA.

The only survey I have is the late John Hale’s, which is okay if a bit older ( my copy is from 1971 ). But it looks like this latest edition is ridiculously expensive for an old survey history. Get a cheaper used copy if you can find one.

Whoa, $60 for a paperback? I don’t think so – and my library doesn’t seem to have this exact title.

How’s this book by the same author?

Never mind, Half.com had a copy for $10.

Thanks for the recommendation!

As a middlebrow, I’d recommend William Manchester’s A World Lit Only By Fire, anchored by Luther and Magellan. “Well, it’s good to be back home. Hey, how come the ship’s log is a day off?”

I loved Empires of the Sea, which focuses on the Turkish attacks on Europe in the early 1500s. Reads like a suspense novel.

That looks good, too. I’ll add it to my wish list.

That looks interesting, but more specific than what I’m looking for.

Thanks, all.

A World Lit Only By Fire is rather notorious in medievalist circles for being just so wrong - it’s a crappy text outdated even when it was written, the field has moved so far beyond it it’s just not funny…here’s a good introductory reviewthat has a nice list of alternatives at the end, and links to this more detailed analysis.

Interesting, thanks!

I know this is a little earlier than you specifically requested, but A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman is a fantastic read about the century preceding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Distant_Mirror

Well shit, there goes my middlebrow book cred. Next you’ll tell me that John Wesley Hardin didn’t shoot a man just fer snorin’!

Was that in Reno? I thought it was just to see him die.

I am a big fan of Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century.” I found it very readable, informative and downright entertaining.

She has faded in popularity since her death, but I always enjoyed her writings with the possible exception of Stillwell: The American Experience in China. That was a labor of obsession.

To answer your specific question, many of the explorers in the age of exploration of course were Italian - like Columbus and Cabot (A/K/A “Columbo” and “Chabotto”), not to mention “Amerigo Vespucci” after which “America” was named! :smiley:

The difference is that they all tended to have non-Italian state sponsors. The reasons for this were:

  • the nations they worked for had an Atlantic focus;
  • the money in Italy was based on the trade with the ME and the Black Sea - trade routes the Atlantic powers were trying to ‘outflank’; and
  • the city-states of Italy were small, while exploration was expensive. The new nation-states like England and Spain had the cash.

Gotcha, Malthus – I’m looking for a book that spells all of that out in more detail.

And I own a copy of A Distant Mirror (or I did at some point … it’s hard keeping track of the books that have gone in and out of my life over the last 30 years), so maybe I’ll finally get around to reading it.

This is why.

I don’t know how I could have forgotten the water ballet with the nuns.