as exciting a policeman

The book has two parts: the first is the pursuit of Pogge, at the dawn of the 15th century, to find a copy of Lucretius's poem "De Rerum Natura" and emulation it arouses among bibliophiles of the time . Then Greenblatt managed to make us follow the influence of Lucretius's poem over the following centuries until its logical reasoning is confirmed in large part by experimental methods. Along the way we witness the many and varied attempts by the church to address the contradiction between Epicureanism and Christian doctrine. The style is always bright (thanks also to a fluid translation) and impeccable scholarship. A highly recommended.