The Florentines: From Dante to Galileo: The Transformation of Western Civilization Audiobook

A sweeping and magisterial four-hundred-year history of both the city and the people who gave birth to the Renaissance.

Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642, something happened that transformed the entire culture of western civilization. Painting, sculpture, and architecture would all visibly change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of humanity would take on a completely new aspect. Sciences would be born—or emerge in an entirely new guise.

The ideas that broke this mold began, and continued to flourish, in the city of Florence in northern central Italy. These ideas, which placed an increasing emphasis on the development of our common humanity—rather than other-worldly spirituality—coalesced in what came to be known as humanism. This philosophy and its new ideas would eventually spread across Italy, yet wherever they took hold they would retain an element essential to their origin. And as they spread further across Europe, this element would remain.

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"This book combines so much facts.myths and gossip i to make it most intriguing. For anyone interested in the renaissance, including art, architecture, science, literary it has it all, and the way that it is put together allows one to understand the connections to our future. It isn’t just about one artist and their art, but of the times, the community, the rest of Europe. Even though I was interested more in the art component, I found myself totally absorbed by the other fax, especially the scientific part that I had never attempted to understand. It is long and times a bit repetitive but worse every minute you spend listening to this history. "

— Animac (5 out of 5 stars)