In 8th century Baghdad, Arab discoveries augmented Greek learning. Yet some texts did survive and The Map of Knowledge explores the role played by seven cities around the Mediterranean-rare centers of knowledge in a dark world, where scholars supported by enlightened heads of state collected, translated and shared manuscripts. Christianity cast a shadow over so-called pagan thought, books were burned, and the library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of classical knowledge, was destroyed. But as the vast Roman Empire disintegrated, so did appreciation of these precious texts. The foundations of modern knowledge-philosophy, math, astronomy, geography-were laid by the Greeks, whose ideas were written on scrolls and stored in libraries across the Mediterranean and beyond. Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, winner of the Pulitzer PrizeĪfter the Fall of Rome, when many of the great ideas of the ancient world were lost to the ravages of the Dark Ages, three crucial manuscripts passed hand to hand through seven Mediterranean cities and survived to fuel the revival of the Renaissance-an exciting debut history. “ The Map of Knowledge is an endlessly fascinating book, rich in detail, capacious and humane in vision.”
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