Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Non-FictionOne of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. The copying and translation of this ancient book-the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age-fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson. 16 pages full-color illustrations

2011年国家非小说类图书奖得主作为世界上最知名的学者之一，斯蒂芬-格林布拉特精心打造了一部创新的历史作品和一个惊心动魄的发现故事，其中一份手稿从一千年的忽视中脱颖而出，改变了人类思想的进程，使我们所知的世界成为可能。近六百年前，一个矮小、和蔼、机敏的三十多岁的男人从图书馆的书架上取下一本非常古老的手稿，兴奋地看到他所发现的东西，并下令将其复制。那本书是古罗马哲学史诗《论事物的本质》的最后一份存世手稿，作者是卢克莱修--一首关于最危险思想的美丽诗篇：宇宙的运行没有神的帮助，宗教恐惧对人类生活造成损害，物质是由永恒运动的极小颗粒组成的，在新的方向上碰撞和转向。对这本古书的复制和翻译--这个时代最伟大的猎书人的最大发现--推动了文艺复兴，激励了波提切利等艺术家和乔尔丹诺-布鲁诺等思想家；塑造了伽利略和弗洛伊德、达尔文和爱因斯坦的思想；并对蒙田和莎士比亚甚至托马斯-杰斐逊等作家产生了革命性影响。16页全彩插图