The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

Once there was a poem containing such radical thinking that it changed the direction of the world - it caused a swerve.  Somewhere around the year 50 BCE a philosopher known as Lucretius wrote a poem called De rerum natura - On the Nature of Things.  In this poem he questioned the notion of powerful gods and goddesses controlling the world, suggested the possibility that everything in the world from the smallest insect to the greatest star in the solar system were all made from small particles he called atoms, and proposed that the pursuit of pleasure was an acceptable part of living - to name a few.  At a time that required actually physically copying a book onto fragile material, copies were difficult to obtain and, centuries later, it was seemingly lost to the world.  Then in 1417 a secretary of a disposed pope was in search of ancient texts which he believed would help elevate thinking out of the dark ages.  Poggio was one of a group of questioning thinkers who referred to themselves as humanists.  He traveled from monasteries to private libraries and back looking for these ancient handwritten texts sometimes finding just single pages.  His discovery of Lucretius' poem set in motion one of the waves in the ocean of change which we now call the Renaissance.  Along the way, many of the individuals who carried the message of the poem fell victim to the Inquisition.  Many others found ways to hide that message in works of art.  Once the conversation started there was no turning back.  And it wasn't just scientific discovery that was unleashed.  One of the many familiar characters involved in this journey of ideas had five Latin versions and multiple translation of the poem in his private library.  Was it just coincidence that our mystery man insisted on including "...pursuit of happiness.." in a very important familiar document?  As dense as this book sometimes gets, it is definitely a fascinating testament to the power of the pen.