BOOK REVIEW – The Swerve: How the World Became Modern – Reviewed by Jack Harvey

PHOTO BY ALEIGHSA WRIGHT

Jack and his husband, Al Burgermeister, retired to Panama City in the fall of 2010 from Jersey City, NJ, where they both worked in the airline industry. Warm weather and beautiful beaches, in addition to friends who had already moved here, brought them to Panama City. Since then, Jack has learned to play contract duplicate bridge where his skills are challenged several times a week. He is a board member of the non-profit LGBTQ Center of Bay County, which focuses on providing a “safe space” for LGBTQ youth to gather and share their concerns.

REVIEW

My favorite books tend to be biographies, historical fiction, and, once in a while, a good murder mystery. I especially enjoy reading books by Dan Brown because he throws in lots of history and fun facts. “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern,” by Stephen Greenblatt (2012), is a fascinating book that effortlessly weaves together many interesting facts of history. It is a 2,200-year journey through time.

The book tells how “On the Nature of Things,” an amazingly large poem of 7,400 dactylic hexameters divided into six books, written in the first century BCE by Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, was almost lost to history. In 1417, while attending the Council on Constance, a Roman Catholic calligrapher to the pope discovered the poem in a Catholic monastery in a small German town.

The poem brilliantly explains the ideas of Greek philosopher Epicurus, who lived several hundred years before Lucretius. After the calligrapher discovered, copied, and smuggled the poem back to Rome, multiple copies were made, thanks to Gutenberg’s invention of the movable type press, resulting in its distribution throughout the civilized world in what has become known as the Epicureanism system of philosophy.

Over the centuries since, many celebrated scholars and philosophers including Moliére, Ben Johnson, Da Vinci, and Isaac Newton were influenced by the teachings contained within the poem. Most relevant to us as Americans, Thomas Jefferson owned five copies, including translations in French and Italian, in his Monticello library. The well-known phrase contained in the Declaration of Independence, that all people have a right to the “pursuit of happiness,” may be attributed to Lucretius’ poem.

I was so impressed with Greenblatt’s treatment of the poem and its teachings that I recorded my reflections in a 25-minute YouTube video. If you are intrigued, you can find it by searching “Harvey and Swerve.”