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.