The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern was published in 2011 and describes how the rediscovery of an ancient poem launches the Renaissance and helps shape the modern age. The Swerve won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Lowell Prize.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 CE, Europe moves into the Middle Ages, and Christianity is the only permitted religion. Most of the literary works of ancient Greeks and Romans are lost through neglect or destruction; the rest lie unused in the moldy recesses of monastic libraries.

In 1417, papal secretary Poggio Bracciolini sets out on a search for the lost books of the Roman Empire. Poggio scours Europe and finds many such manuscripts; one of these is a long and beautiful poem by Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things. It describes the ideas of an ancient sect, the Epicureans, whose beliefs will overturn many of the medieval church’s most cherished tenets and remake the western world. The Swerve is the story of how that happens.

Chapters 1 and 2 describe how, in the 1300s, ancient tomes long lost are brought back to life, beginning with the rediscovery of Titus Livius’ History of Rome.