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Original Title:	The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
ISBN:	0393343405 (ISBN13: 9780393343403)
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Ovid (Roman), Poggio Bracciolini, Lucretius
Literary Awards:	Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (2012), Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Nonfiction (2012), National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction (2011), James Russell Lowell Prize (2011), Cundill History Prize Nominee (2012)

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Stephen Greenblatt

Paperback | Pages: 356 pages

Rating: 3.85 | 26016 Users | 2677 Reviews

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One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling 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.

Specify Containing Books The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Title	:	The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Author	:	Stephen Greenblatt
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 356 pages
Published	:	September 4th 2012 by W. W. Norton Company (first published September 26th 2011)
Categories	:	History. Nonfiction. Philosophy. Science. Religion

Rating Containing Books The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Ratings: 3.85 From 26016 Users | 2677 Reviews

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Major disappointment, this book. First, the title and subtitle suggest that the rediscovery of the manuscript of Lucretius' On the Nature of Things had a major influence on Renaissance thinking. Greenblatt does not make his case on this, in fact, offers only the palest of evidence: a sentence here or there from a handful of Renaissance types. It's as though he came up with an idea, started doing the research, found out the thesis didn't wash, but wrote the book anyway. The misguided ideas about

A dubious thesis propped up by selective evidence and punctuated by digressions that were often only tenuously connected to the book's argument. Greenblatt massively overstates Epicurean philosophy's significance in the ancient world and his bold claims for the influence of Lucretius' poem in the Renaissance are rarely supported by the evidence he presents to any sufficient degree. Worst of all is his bizarre caricatures of the Medieval period - he doesn't seem to know the Twelfth Century



I think Stephen Greenblatt is a tremendously intelligent man, and a gifted writer. I also think 'The Swerve: How the Renaissance began' is frightfully oversold by its title and blurb.One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted an innovative work of history and a thrilling 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....The copying and translation

The Anti-Climactic Swerve Greenblatt is a good story-teller and delivers good entertainment value here, but not much informative or educational value, except as an enticing short introductory to Lucretius, Bruno and Montaigne.As Greenblatt acknowledges, there is no single explanation for the emergence of the Renaissance and the release of the forces that have shaped our own world. Despite this awareness, he has tried to trace out The Swerve - of how the world swerved in a new direction by

But for the pagans... pain was understood not as a positive value, a stepping stone to salvation, as it was by pious Christians intent on whipping themselves, but as an evil, something visited upon rulebreakers, criminals, captives, unfortunate wretches, and - the only category with dignity - soldiers....I went into this book convinced I was going to hate it. I mean, have you read the blurb!?!?! The back of my book says:From the gardens of ancient Rome to the chambers of monastic scriptoria,

Before reading this book, I hadn't thought much about the renaissance. Sure, a few college French courses helped drive home the point that it literally means "rebirth," and I kind of knew that old books were involved, but I didn't think much about the logistics. I imagined ancient texts were found in much the same way anything else gets found, as in "Oh, by the way, I was going through storage looking for the Christmas decorations, and guess what I found: some poem by this dude Lucretius!"