The Swerve

Three stars doesn't totally capture this for me: I loved the subject matter, and the narrative arc Greenblatt traced through thousands of years of history. I discovered that I'm an Epicurean, pretty much, and it's astonishing how successfully the Catholic Church manipulated the connotations of that philosophy. So overall, it's great, but I found myself wishing that Greenblatt had spent a little less time on Poggio Bracciolini specifically, and more on the general sociocultural millieu. And it won a Pulitzer, so what the hell do I know.

I found this book to be fascinating and it has inspired me to read further, in particular to read a translation of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things. I enjoyed the mystery of Poggio's manuscript hunting–who hasn't browsed a used bookstore in search of a lost gem?–and some of the intrigue in the 15th Century Catholic Church that played a role both in his discovery of the Lucretius poem and the suppression of its implications. Not to everyone's taste, I'm sure, but it drew me in and never lost me.

I listened to the audio version of the book, and I have mixed feelings about the narrator. I think his breathy style is more suited to romantic fiction than to serious non-fiction. On the other hand, his pronunciation of countless Italian names was flawless (at least to my ear).