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Greenblatt’s “The Swerve” Wins National Book Award!

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Yesterday, Big Think Expert and renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt won the National Book Award for nonfiction for bringing to life a 15th century book-hunting expedition that changed the world. 

A true story of ideas, adventure, and intrigue that reads like Eco’s The Name of the Rose, The Swerve: How The World Became Moderntells the story of the rediscovery ofOn the Nature of Things, a multi-volume philosophical poem by Lucretius. Written in the 5th century CE, this Epicurean masterpiece remained buried in a monastic library for a millennium until a book-hunting humanist named Poggio Bracciolini rediscovered it and unleashed its intellectual tsunami on the world. 

See Greenblatt’s Big Think interview about The Swerve – and read more about Lucretius’ intellectually prophetic work. 

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