The creator of the hit podcast series Tides of History and Fall of
Rome explores the four explosive decades between 1490 and 1530,
bringing to life the dramatic and deeply human story of how the West was
reborn.
In the bestselling tradition of The Swerve and A Distant Mirror,
The Verge tells the story of a period that marked a decisive turning
point for both European and world history. Here, author Patrick Wyman
examines two complementary and contradictory sides of the same
historical coin: the world-altering implications of the developments of
printed mass media, extreme taxation, exploitative globalization,
humanistic learning, gunpowder warfare, and mass religious conflict in
the long term, and their intensely disruptive consequences in the
short-term.
As told through the lives of ten real people--from famous figures like
Christopher Columbus and wealthy banker Jakob Fugger to a ruthless
small-time merchant and a one-armed mercenary captain--The Verge
illustrates how their lives, and the times in which they lived, set the
stage for an unprecedented globalized future.
Over an intense forty-year period, the seeds for the so-called "Great
Divergence" between Western Europe and the rest of the globe would be
planted. From Columbus's voyage across the Atlantic to Martin Luther's
sparking the Protestant Reformation, the foundations of our own,
recognizably modern world came into being.
For the past 500 years, historians, economists, and the policy-oriented
have argued which of these individual developments best explains the
West's rise from backwater periphery to global dominance. As The Verge
presents it, however, the answer is far more nuanced.
