Il manoscritto. Come la riscoperta di un libro perduto cambiò la storia della cultura europea

"When we say...that pleasure is the end and aim of life, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in t Leggi tutto

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 emer Leggi tutto

Two thousand years ago a Roman named Lucretius wrote a poem that described a universe guided by physical laws rather than the whims of mystical deities and also advised that people should pursue happiness rather than spend their lives trying to appease gods who don’t exist . As I write this in 2012 Leggi tutto

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

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 - soldie Leggi tutto

The subtitle of this book is “how the world became modern.” It imparts no such knowledge. It’s a story of the marginal liberalization of thought brought on by the rediscovery of Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things . All the business about atoms. I didn’t learn much . Yet there’s stuff to like. Especia Leggi tutto

Interesting book about the history of Roman poet Lucretius’ text On The Nature of Things and its rediscovery by Poggio the Florentine in the 1400s. I certainly learned a lot and enjoyed the storytelling for the most part. My one issue is that despite teasing out the influence that Lucretius had on B Leggi tutto

Usually five stars is my rating for a classic I read that was everything I hoped it would be. Nonfiction only gets five stars if it's very special. Once or twice a year. This book is great. It's a microhistory; that's a book that takes a little niche in history, and generally uses that niche to jump Leggi tutto

O carte despre o răsturnare istorică (oare de ce preferăm cărțile de acest gen?), scrisă cu un simț narativ deosebit, dar prea puțin convingătoare. De cele mai multe ori prefer o astfel de carte tocmai pentru ipoteza îndrăzneață pe care istoricul încearcă s-o justifice, deși pînă și el știe că încer Leggi tutto