Boston Globe: ‘The Swerve: How the World Became Modern’ by Stephen Greenblatt - Books

At the center of Stephen Greenblatt's dazzling new book, "The Swerve: How the World Became Modern,'' is a hero: Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459 CE), "[a] short, genial, cannily alert man [who] reached out one day, took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied.'' It may not sound heroic, but "behind that one moment was the arrest and imprisonment of a pope, the burning of heretics, and a great culturewide explosion of interest in pagan antiquity . . . if he had had an intimation of the forces he was unleashing, he might have thought twice about drawing so explosive a work out of the darkness in which it slept.''".............

'The Swerve: How the World Became Modern' by Stephen Greenblatt - Books
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2011/09/23/cold-case/slAaWg4XJJyVcLBElkwQrI/story.html