Sign-In
Cart
The Polymath: A Cultural History from Leonardo Da Vinci to Susan Sontag
Paperback
Historical FiguresLiterary FiguresGeneral World History
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN10: 0300260466
ISBN13: 9780300260465
Publisher: Yale Univ Pr
Published: Aug 31 2021
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.75
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.04 Depth: 7.72
Language: English
ISBN13: 9780300260465
Publisher: Yale Univ Pr
Published: Aug 31 2021
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.75
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.04 Depth: 7.72
Language: English
From Leonardo Da Vinci to Oliver Sacks: the first history of the western polymath, from the Renaissance to the present An absorbing group portrait and intellectual history.--Kirkus Reviews An admirable mixture of industry and erudition.--Robert Wilson, Wall Street Journal From Leonardo Da Vinci to John Dee and Comenius, from George Eliot to Oliver Sacks and Susan Sontag, polymaths have moved the frontiers of knowledge in countless ways. But history can be unkind to scholars with such encyclopedic interests. All too often these individuals are remembered for just one part of their valuable achievements. In this engaging, erudite account, renowned cultural historian Peter Burke argues for a more rounded view. Identifying 500 western polymaths, Burke explores their wide-ranging successes and shows how their rise matched a rapid growth of knowledge in the age of the invention of printing, the discovery of the New World and the Scientific Revolution. It is only more recently that the further acceleration of knowledge has led to increased specialization and to an environment that is less supportive of wide-ranging scholars and scientists. Spanning the Renaissance to the present day, Burke changes our understanding of this remarkable intellectual species.
Also in
General World History
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paperback
$10.99
Titanic: The Ship Magnificent - Volume Two: Interior Design and Fitting Out
Hall, Steve
Beveridge, Bruce
Braunschweiger, Art
Hardcover
$84.50
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
$236.28
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
From $12.99
A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960
Van Slyck, Abigail A.
Hardcover
$12.99
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book
Bittman, Mark
Hardcover
$10.99
The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII, 1485-1534
Everett, Michael
Paperback
$10.99
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Loewen, James W.
Paperback
$9.99
The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
Groom, Winston
Paperback
From $9.99
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
McNeill, J. R.
Paperback
$10.99
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
$17.10
Dangerous Games: Faces, Incidents, and Casualties of the Cold War
Baron, Scott
Wise, James E.
Hardcover
$8.99
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Green, John
Hardcover
$25.20
The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail
Dolin, Eric Jay
Hardcover
From $19.99
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World
Ahamed, Liaquat
Hardcover
$28.80
Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution
Kiernan, Denise
Hardcover
$28.80
The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy
Ross, Steven J.
Hardcover
$29.69
100 Bible Verses That Made America: Defining Moments That Shaped Our Enduring Foundation of Faith
Morgan, Robert J.
Paperback
$21.84
The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World
Mazzeo, Tilar J.
Hardcover
$27.00
How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words
Galer, Sophia Smith
Hardcover
$28.80
The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery
Tiffany, Kaitlyn
Hardcover
$31.50
True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color--From Azure to Zinc Pink
Stamper, Kory
Hardcover
$28.80
1,000 Days in America: An Illustrated History of the Moments That Defined a Nation
National Geographic
Hardcover
$47.50
American Pope: Leo XIV's Road from the South Side of Chicago to Vatican City
Burke, Daniel
Detrow, Scott
Hardcover
$31.34
Two Ships: Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America
Reynolds, David S.
Hardcover
$31.50
Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age
Tabor, James M.
Hardcover
$28.79
The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
Kara, Siddharth
Hardcover
$27.00
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic
Stewart, Lindsey
Hardcover
$33.25
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
Sides, Hampton
Paperback
$17.10
How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women
Venditozzi, Zoe
Mitchell, Claire
Paperback
$17.09
Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women's Movement and the Future of American Politics
McElya, Micki
Hardcover
$30.40
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World
Pancevski, Bojan
Hardcover
$26.99
A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders: Surprising Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps
Elledge, Jonn
Paperback
$17.06
The Phantom: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill
Clavin, Tom
Drury, Bob
Hardcover
$31.35
Freedom's Daughters: How a Generation of Black Women Resisted Oppression Through Literacy and Education
Headlee, Celeste
Hardcover
$29.44
Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight Over Free Speech in Modern America
Loeffler, James
Hardcover
$26.99
Socialism: The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control [With Paperback Book]
Federer, William J.
Paperback
$19.00
No One's Coming: The Rogue Heroes Our Government Turns to When There's Nowhere Else to Turn
Hazzard, Kevin
Hardcover
$28.50
The Summer of Death: The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern-Day America
Williams, Geoff
Hardcover
$33.25
Captain's Dinner: A Shipwreck, an Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial That Changed Legal History
Cohen, Adam
Hardcover
$28.80
Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City
Brown, Kate
Hardcover
$28.79
The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within Us Slave Culture
Woodard, Vincent
Paperback
$56.55
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
Egan, Timothy
Paperback
$16.20
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Paperback
From $11.99
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
McGilchrist, Iain
Paperback
$21.80
On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World
Hazrat, Florence
Hardcover
$28.80
Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat-And the American Revolution-Transformed Britain
Allen, Danielle
Hardcover
$33.75
The Long Run: Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit, Grete Waitz, and the Decade That Made the Marathon Cool
Dugard, Martin
Hardcover
$28.80