The Swerve

Summary

An intellectual history centered on the 1417 rediscovery of Lucretius's ancient Epicurean poem "On the Nature of Things" by the Italian book hunter Poggio Bracciolini. Greenblatt argues that the recirculation of this materialist text through European thought helped pry the medieval world toward humanism, scientific inquiry, and modern secular sensibility. He blends biography, manuscript history, and philosophy to make a case for one obscure find as a hinge of cultural change.