One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt, has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery. In this tale, 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. With excitement, he discovered that it 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. It inspired 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, Shakespeare, and even Thomas Jefferson.

From the gardens of the ancient philosophers to the dark chambers of monastic scriptoria during the Middle Ages, Greenblatt brings Poggio's search and discovery to life in a way that deepens our understanding of the world we live in now. An intellectually invigorating, nonfiction version of a mystery-in-the-archives thriller.

Raz, a mathematician, is among a cohort of secluded scientists and philosophers who are called upon to save the world from impending catastrophe.

Meet Professor Alfred Jules Ayer, a famous philosopher noted for his atheism, his disdain of all things metaphysical, and his reverence for logic, in “The Candidate.” After suffering a heart attack, he finds himself in the Greek Underworld. He never expected an afterlife, and the fabled abode is nothing like the fable, which never mentioned a salmon with human arms and legs, or a flying saucer captained by lizard man.

In “Harold,” you’ll meet a homunculus who is certain he is a one of a kind, a freak of nature. Imagine his surprise when he discovers an island populated by thousands of his kind. There he finds adventure, love, and danger. He must face thugs his size, sinister large people, a dangerous house cat, and a plethora of perplexing situations.

Irresolute poets find their plush postmortem refuge is anything but when it soon becomes a type of Hell in “Between Life and Oblivion.”

Discover the true story of Helen, the famous face that launched a thousand ships, in the tale “A More Likely Odyssey.”

Within these pages you’ll be taken on journeys beyond imagining. You’ll meet characters and explore familiar worlds through different eyes. Look beyond the hedge…