WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2012 Almost six hundred years ago a short genial man took a very old manuscript off a library shelf With excitement he saw what he had discovered & ordered it copied The book was a miraculously surviving copy of an ancient Roman philosophical epic On the Nature of Things by Lucretius & it changed the course of history He found 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 & that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion These ideas fuelled the Renaissance inspiring Botticelli shaping the thoughts of Montaigne Darwin & Einstein An innovative work of history by one of the world's most celebrated scholars & a thrilling story of discovery The Swerve details how one manuscript plucked from a thousand years of neglect made possible the world as we know it Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Nonfiction