One of the many things I adore about Palmer is that I think her academic work is breezy and readable and then her novels happen. It's such a perfect reversal.
This book is amazing and, to be fair, I am willing to be interested in any period in history provided that someone passionate about it wants to tell me about it, but she is SO GOOD and I love how carefully the book teaches you how historians think about things and, rather than being impartial, weaves multiple partialities into the discourse and showcases them. When you watch how the trick is done, it looks even more impressive.

There's so much about this book to appreciate and it's exactly the kind of writing I want to see more of.

There's a wandering thought in the back of my mind about the way that this messy world with its new ideas and its progress that is neither inevitable nor fully directed but still going somewhere fits in to the way that Judaism develops in this period or, more specifically, how the narrative that branches of Judaism tell about themselves account for the shifts in worldview that they don't always admit to but that still happen to them and that they are part of. I'm not sure; but it does feel like there is a there there (and it's also going to be a different kind of _there_ because of how Jews experienced the world in this time. Doña Gracia Nasi wandering around this world and looking at the failures of virtue politics...)