From the gardens of ancient Rome to the chambers of monastic scrip-toria, renowned scholar Stephen Greenblatt brings the past to vivid life in this exploration of one of the most influential works of literature of all time. In the winter of 1417, an unemployed papal secretary turned book hunter named Poggio Bracciolini discovered a copy of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things in a remote monastery. The story of how this astonishing poem would cause the world to swerve in a new direction is at once a supreme work of scholarship, a literary page-turner, and a thrilling testament to the power of the written word.