Blog (Ex Urbe)

On my blog, Ex Urbe, I write essays about history, philosophy, mythology, science fiction and fantasy, movies, comics, food, and other topics.  I often discuss my research travel, especially my times in European cities including Florence and Rome.  I also post travel photography, focusing on historic sights and art.  Many of my essays are more casual examinations of topics I have been teaching or researching, ways of sharing my work in a lighter and more public setting than the classroom or academic books.

I also record the Ex Urbe Ad Astra Podcast jointly with my good friend and award-winning F&SF novelist Jo Walton. In it we interview fellow writers, historians, scientists, and other friends, discussing topics ranging from the craft of writing, to city planning and philosophy, to Martian geology, to gelato and other nifty topics. You can listen to it for free on Libsyn, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, or support my Patreon to receive episodes in advance.

Recommended Ex Urbe Blog Entries:

I also regularly post historical photos & facts on twitter as Ada_Palmer tagged either #historypix or #SomethingBeautiful 

I also sometimes blog for Tor.com.  There I write about fiction, the craft of writing, mythology, history, literature, television, and manga & anime.

 

RSS The Latest Posts

  • The Lost Towers of the Guelph-Ghibelline Wars January 15, 2025
    Looks fake, doesn’t it?  This implausible Medieval forest of towers, as dense as Manhattan skyscrapers, is our best reconstruction of the town of Bologna at its height, toward the end of the Medieval Guelph-Ghibelline wars. We don’t see many such towers today… or think we don’t, but actually their remnants are all over Italy. Often […]
  • Cellini’s Perseus & the Violence of Renaissance Art January 13, 2025
    Inventing the Renaissance comes out in one month in the UK (2 months USA), so I’m going to try to post daily this month on social media to share cool pictures and stories of things related to the book. I thought I would also gather them here, posting them sometimes as individual posts, sometimes gathering […]
  • Inventing the Renaissance (book) coming out! January 8, 2025
    It’s time at last. If you’ve enjoyed my ExUrbe blog posts and stories about history over the years, here’s the book-length version on its way!  Inventing the Renaissance: the Myth of a Golden Age, coming out February 13th 2025 in the UK (pre-order through Amazon.co.uk in hardcover, Kindle e-book or Audiobook) and March 21st in the USA (pre-order from […]
  • Tools for Thinking About Censorship January 21, 2024
    “Was it a government action, or did they do it themselves because of pressure?” This is inevitably among our first questions when news breaks that any expressive work (a book, film, news story, blog post etc.) has been censored or suppressed by the company or group trusted with it (a publisher, a film studio, a […]
  • Strange Horizons Column & New Essay Published October 18, 2023
    I am now a regular non-fiction columnist for Strange Horizons, a wonderful magazine that it’s been an absolute pleasure to work with. I’ll have an essay coming out a couple of times a year, and I’m very excited to be working on this. I’m writing here to share the link to an essay I’m doubly […]
  • All People Are Created Educable, a Vital Oft-Forgotten Tenet of Modern Democracy November 14, 2022
    (I have one of my more traditional history posts underway, but wanted to post this separate thought first. Felt timely.) Many shocking, new ideas shaped the American Experiment and related 18th century democratic ventures; as an historian of the period, I often notice that one of the most fundamental of them, and most shocking to […]
  • Terra Ignota Nominated for Best Series Hugo! April 7, 2022
    Jo here. I’m delighted to be writing to celebrate that Terra Ignota is nominated for a Best Series Hugo. I feel this is utterly deserved, and hope very much that it will win, though really the nomination is the important part — finding one the best is much harder than finding the five or six […]
  • Terra Ignota AMA Questions: Meatmakers and Kitchen Trees December 17, 2021
    Briefly: live right now is the Chicon Auction to raise money for this summer’s Chicago Worldcon, and they have some great Terra Ignota stuff including signed books and a special 2454 Antarctic Olympics Hoodie I made for Terra Ignota fun. You can bid online! Meanwhile, hello friends! Sharing some more fun discussions from my recent […]
  • Terra Ignota AMA Questions: Craft of Writing & Performer Casting December 10, 2021
    Hello, friends!  Sharing some more more favorite questions & answers from recent AMAs, including some about the craft of writing, and about the question of what it would be like casting Terra Ignota for film or TV. Q: Why Don’t You Describe the Flying Cars? So, we get a bit more detail in book 4 […]
  • Worldcon Schedule & Terra Ignota Calendar December 6, 2021
    No essay today, friends, but two announcements, of a fun project and sharing the spectacular list of panels I’m doing at Discon (Worldcon) in Washington DC in a few weeks! Worldcon is hybrid this year, so many of my panels will be available online! Fun project first: working with the brilliant crafts & design artist […]