The swerve : how the world became modern /

The swerve : how the world became modern /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Greenblatt, Stephen, 1943-
Edition:	1st ed.
Imprint:	New York : W.W. Norton, c2011.
Description:	356 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 25 cm.
Language:	English
Subject:	Lucretius Carus, Titus -- Influence. Lucretius Carus, Titus. -- De rerum natura. Lucretius Carus, Titus. De rerum natura (Lucretius Carus, Titus) Renaissance. Philosophy, Renaissance. Science, Renaissance. Civilization, Modern. Civilization, Modern. Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) Philosophy, Renaissance. Renaissance. Science, Renaissance.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/8464328

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780393064476 (hardcover) 0393064476 (hardcover)
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:	In this work, the author has crafted both a work of history and a story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. The copying and translation of this ancient book, the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age, fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.

Table of Contents:

The book hunter
The moment of discovery
In search of Lucretius
The teeth of time
Birth and rebirth
In the lie factory
A pit to catch foxes
The way things are
The return
Swerves
Afterlives.