6 books about truth and freedom of speech

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Reading lists

Shakespeare On Power

Tyrant

An exploration of power in the plays of William Shakespeare that sheds light on our most urgent contemporary dilemmas.

In this brilliant, beautifully organized, exceedingly readable study of Shakespeare’s tyrants and their tyrannies—their dreadful narcissistic follies, their usurpations and their craziness and their cruelties, their arrogant incompetence, their paranoid viciousness, their falsehoods and their flattery hunger—Stephen Greenblatt manages to elucidate obliquely our own desperate (in Shakespeare’s words) “general woe”.

A scintillating book, uncannily illuminating about current politics, as perceptive about the victims of tyranny as it is about the tyrants themselves.

Nicholas Hytner, former Artistic Director of the Royal National Theatre

[Tyrant] illuminates our present political situation by analysing the traits of Shakespearean tyrants – and their mobs … nimble and intriguing … The 45th president is not mentioned anywhere by name in Tyrant , but the analogies are clear … illuminating.

Ardent and involving ... Greenblatt's points are well made and the implicit parallels are easily drawn ... acutely observed.

Brilliant ... [a] spikily insightful book

A brilliant, vivid, incisive, resonant account of Shakespeare's analysis of politics, and the corruption and abuses of power. He does not need to make contemporary parallels, they are so evidently before us.

Greg Doran, Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company

TYRANT is a striking literary feat. At the outset, the book notes how Shakespeare craftily commented on his own times by telling tales of tyrants from centuries before. In an act of scholarly daring, Greenblatt then proceeds to do exactly the same thing. Rarely have these blood-soaked creatures seemed so recognizably human and so contemporary.

Greenblatt, as ever, writes elegantly and well.

[T]his is not just a book about the perverse psychology of megalomanics, it also describes the social ambience in which they move like sharks in a sea brimming with smaller fish – the enablers

Never less than illuminating… In Tyrant, Greenblatt demonstrates the enduring relevance of Shakespeare’s outlook

Greenblatt illuminatingly… offer[s] new understandings not just of the plays but also of the workings of power itself

A highly entertaining rhetorical exercise tinged with sinister intimations of dread

Tyrant is exceedingly relevant as a lens on US politics and social science research and makes a useful case, too, for incorporating interdisciplinary understanding of societies and governing systems

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. 
 
He is the author of fifteen books, including The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, which won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, as well as the New York Times bestseller Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare and the classic university text Renaissance Self-Fashioning. 
 
 A prize-winning author and celebrated scholar, he has been studying, thinking and writing about Renaissance literature for his entire working life.

'Brilliant' Sunday Times 
 
How does a truly disastrous leader – a sociopath, a demagogue, a tyrant – come to power? How, and why, does a tyrant hold on to power? And what goes on in the hidden recesses of the tyrant's soul? 
 
For help in understanding our most urgent contemporary dilemmas, William Shakespeare has no peer. 
 
'Brilliant, timely' Margaret Atwood, on Twitter 
 
'A scintillating book, uncannily illuminating about current politics, as perceptive about the victims of tyranny as it is about the tyrants themselves' Nicholas Hytner

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

The Story that Created Us

Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Greenblatt tackles the origins of humanity through the most enduring story of all time.

A compelling, all-encompassing story of myth, theology and belief ... He delves deftly and lucidly into theology... Fascinating

Thrilling … a study of western disenchantment, of intellectual progress, of the fading powers of the myths of a simpler age. But it is a more complex study than that. It is also an ode to human creativity and to the powerful grip of narrative

Enthralling, thrilling… Along the way, there is an often hilarious account of scholastic efforts to rationalise the myth’s illogic, and an array of entertaining heresies… What gives Greenblatt’s “intellectual adventure” its tension and excitement is a sense of his own divided loyalties

Erudite, wide-ranging, thought-provoking and elegantly fashioned

Greenblatt, on excellent form here, visits familiar destinations ... with fresh eyes, and opens up new interpretative vistas ... Hefty themes are covered in this spellbinding book, but the learning is worn lightly.

This is a learned book, but Greenblatt’s passion for story-telling makes it read like a series of fascinating anecdotes… The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve is exhilarating to read and a feast for the mind

Greenblatt's inexhaustible curiosity goes without saying; what makes this book a wonder is its passion … nothing less than a love story, a hymn. Who would have thought scholarship could be so ardent or so poignant?

Howard Jacobson, winner of the MAN Booker Prize

Pellucid, absorbing and for many contemporary readers surely definitive account

Tunnelling upwards from the murky beginnings of our origin myth through its myriad interpretations by Augustine, Michelangelo, Durer, Milton, Darwin and more, this riveting book raises essential questions about the nature of narrative.

Greenblatt sets out to tell the story of the story – and it’s just as fascinating. Greenblatt canters through millennia of human history with ease

With all his usual clarity and freshness, one of our foremost literary historians and critics sets out a comprehensive picture of how a story foundational for European civilization developed, from its origins in western Asia to its much-contested place in the post-Darwinian world… This is a rich, learned, lively book, which should engage all who are interested in the history of our imagination and the interweavings of faith, poetics, and philosophy.

Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury

Vibrant and accessible… It is a fascinating subject, and Greenblatt brings to it all the skill of his distinguished career as a scholar and cultural interpreter. His narrative moves briskly from one (arguably) historically pivotal moment to the next. His reading of Milton, whom he greatly admires, is especially illuminating. The whole book is lit up with flashes of insight… This is a very engaging book which explores a rich seam in European history and culture… Well worth reading

Human beings have always told stories about who we are and where we came from … In this enchanting book, Stephen Greenblatt puts this ancient story into historical, literary, and artistic context, helping to illuminate how we humans have chosen to think about ourselves.

Sean Carroll, New York Times bestselling author of THE BIG PICTURE

While some of the conclusions are provocative, that’s always half the fun with Greenblatt.

[A] wonderfully readable account of the most potent of all myths

A fascinating book, which throws light on a good many dark corners about what we think we know

Selected as a book of the year 2017 by The Times and Sunday Times 
 
What is it about Adam and Eve’s story that fascinates us? What does it tell us about how our species lives, dies, works or has sex? 
 
The mythic tale of Adam and Eve has shaped conceptions of human origins and destiny for centuries. Stemming from a few verses in an ancient book, it became not just the foundation of three major world faiths, but has evolved through art, philosophy and science to serve as the mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole, long history of our fears and desires. 
 
In a quest that begins at the dawn of time, Stephen Greenblatt takes us from ancient Babylonia to the forests of east Africa. We meet evolutionary biologists and fossilised ancestors; we grapple with morality and marriage in Milton’s Paradise Lost; and we decide if the Fall is the unvarnished truth or fictional allegory.

How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

Will In The World

The fullest and most brilliant account ever written of Shakespeare's life, his work and his age - now reissued with a 400th anniversary afterword

A vast shelf of biographies of the Bard exists, but this is the book I would take with me to a desert island

A work of wonderful erudition that can be read as an accessible introduction to the social and political milieu from which Shakespeare emerged, and as an elegant guide to the astonishing poems and plays themselves

Both insightful literary criticism and a gripping piece of psychological detective work … Stephen Greenblatt has few equals as a Shakespeare scholar

A delight, full of new insights and infused with a rich understanding of precisely why Shakespeare’s writing gives us such lasting pleasure … quite superb

Thought-provoking … full of unexpected touches … beautifully written

Really gives a sense of being in touch with the man. Greenblatt’s knowledge of the plays and the times in which they were written is so encyclopaedic that he can assemble a convincing portrait of Shakespeare without resorting to smoke and mirrors

The most complexly intelligent and sophisticated, and yet the most keenly enthusiastic, study of the life and work taken together that I have ever read

One of the finest recent Shakespeare biographies

Greenblatt’s fantastically readable biography of our greatest writer paints a riveting portrait of Elizabethan England

Compulsively readable and deeply imaginative

At last, the book Shakespeare has deserved: a brilliant book written by a virtual eyewitness who understands how a playwright takes the stuff of his life and his world and makes it into theatre

A tour de force … a book for artists and ordinary people as well as scholars and students

A thrillingly illuminating, intellectually rigorous, psychologically astute investigation into the life and work of Shakespeare

Will in the World… is enlivened by a sense of what it was like to live, work and get ahead in 16th-century London… accessible and lively too

Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World is widely recognised to be the fullest and most brilliant account ever written of Shakespeare's life, his work and his age. 
 
Shakespeare was a man of his time, constantly engaging with his audience's deepest desires and fears, and by reconnecting with this historic reality we are able to experience the true character of the playwright himself. Greenblatt traces Shakespeare's unfolding imaginative generosity - his ability to inhabit others, to confer upon them his own strength of spirit, to make them truly live as independent beings as no other artist has ever done. 
 
Digging deep into the vital links between the playwright and his world, Will in the World provides the fullest account ever written of the living, breathing man behind the masterpieces.

How the Renaissance Began

The Swerve

A riveting, exemplary tale of the great cultural &quot;swerve&quot; known as the Renaissance.

A riveting, exemplary tale of the great cultural &quot;swerve&quot; known as the Renaissance. 
 
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 and ordered it copied. The book was a miraculously surviving copy of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius and it changed the course of history. 
 
He found a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas &ndash; that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and 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, and Einstein. 
 
An innovative work of history by one of the world&rsquo;s most celebrated scholars and 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. 
 
&lsquo;Superbly readable... An exciting story, and Greenblatt tells it with his customary clarity and verve&rsquo; Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Daily Telegraph

Superbly readable... An exciting story, and Greenblatt tells it with his customary clarity and verve

Superb history ... this concise, learned and fluently written book tells a remarkable story

In this outstandingly constructed assessment of the birth of philosophical modernity, renowned Shakespeare scholar Greenblatt deftly transports reader to the dawn of the Renaissance...Readers from across the humanities will find this enthralling account irresistible

More wonderfully illuminating Renaissance history from a master scholar and historian (starred review)

In this gloriously learned page-turner, both biography and intellectual history, Harvard Shakespearean scholar Greenblatt turns his attention to the front end of the Renaissance as the origin of Western culture's foundation: the free questioning of truth (starred review)

Stephen Greenblatt

What a magnificently thrilling read ... Dark Renaissance is a dazzling account of a dazzling life

A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist, Dark Renaissance conjures the Elizabethan age as a place of instability, succession anxiety, and burgeoning theatrical genius. Essential and addictive reading: Greenblatt's Kit Marlowe leaps from the page with all the élan and immediacy of his plays

This brilliant and riveting book brings Christopher Marlowe out of the shadows, capturing the remarkable and sudden life (and the no less sudden and violent death) of this extraordinary Elizabethan poet and playwright. No critic has done more than Stephen Greenblatt to illuminate Marlowe’s world and work. Dark Renaissance is a worthy successor and companion to Will in the World

As evocative as any novel, Stephen Greenblatt takes the reader into the biting cold and dark of the little ice age of Elizabethan England and explores the network of spies, patrons, poets and fraudsters who copied, exploited and trapped Christopher Marlowe. A triumphant piece of story-telling

A terrific read … as propulsive as that of any spy novel … A thrilling, twisty tale that brilliantly captures the horror and the possibilities of that lost, crepuscular world

A great book ... Riveting and evocative

An unforgettable literary biographical tour de force. Almost single-handed, [Greenblatt] has curated a rehabilitation of Marlowe's reputation as the greatest rival, collaborator and exact contemporary of the glover's boy from Stratford ... Greenblatt nails the playwright's staggering originality ... [A] brilliant portrait of a strangely modern, tragic figure, who's 'fatal genius' became the catalyst for this earthquake in English literature and culture

In his riveting new biography, Dark Renaissance, Harvard scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores Marlowe’s short, subversive life and argues that it was he, even more than Shakespeare, who ‘awakened the genius of the English Renaissance’ … Dazzling

Dazzling … vivid … Greenblatt provides a gripping narrative … which does indeed at times read like something out of Le Carré … impeccable

A brilliant and revelatory life of Christopher Marlowe. Dark Renaissance is a gripping, fascinating portrait, seasoned with Stephen Greenblatt’s superb scholarship. Unsurpassable

This gripping biography focuses on Marlowe's brief, brilliant life ... Greenblatt fills [the book] with lively descriptions of the world that shaped this remarkable mind

This is such a gleeful piece of writing. Greenblatt writes with his customary exuberance - which, of course, perfectly suits his principal subject, the life and work of Christopher Marlowe

A thrilling portrait of the English theatre’s great transgressor. Stephen Greenblatt gives brilliant life to Marlowe's vaunting intellect, his reckless sexuality, his double-dealing with the security services and above all his theatrical imagination, which exploded out of nowhere to transform the Elizabethan stage

This is a good, solid and well-informed biography. Greenblatt has an excellent sense of what came before Marlowe… [and] vividly evokes the London of the time… Dark Renaissance is readable and trustworthy

Right on cue comes the first major biography of Marlowe in two decades, written by the unquestioned eminence of Shakespearean new historicism … In its sweep, pace and scholarship, this book vividly contextualises Marlowe’s brilliance as a dissident thinker and wildly innovative writer

In previous books, including Will in the World, his best-selling biography of Shakespeare, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Swerve, Greenblatt emphasised the importance of cultural context in understanding literature, the so-called new historicism. In Dark Renaissance, he does so with dazzling effects, evoking England circa 1580 as an almost dystopian backwater

In Dark Renaissance, Greenblatt tells this murky but exhilarating tale with pace and gusto ... No one can speculate with greater authority than Mr Greenblatt

Elegant, engrossing ... From aristocrats to shopkeepers to 'bawdy baskets' (prostitutes), Greenblatt captures the crowds that cut across classes. His analysis is Shakespearean in spirit, crisp and conversational, tipped with puns and wordplay

In Greenblatt's hands, literary scholarship, too, has taken a great leap forward. A scintillating biography of Christopher Marlowe by one of America's leading humanities scholars

Greenblatt excels at immersing the reader in that time and place and has an ear for the delectable turn of phrase. The rich historical detail, thriller-like pacing, and an abundance of intrigue keep the pages turning

A dazzling dive into the life of Christopher Marlowe… part biography, part thriller, and all fire. If you like your literary history with edge, intrigue, and a touch of danger…this book is your backstage pass

Since his critical debut… [Greenblatt] has understood and practiced criticism as a higher form of storytelling. The same narrative flair is beautifully showcased in Dark Renaissance. Modern parallels and critical insights are carefully and accessibly deployed

Greenblatt…[gives] us brilliant vignettes of the times in which Marlowe live and some of the extraordinary people he knew

Daring, scandal and tragedy are a good formula for immortality. Yet Marlowe is little known and less performed. In Dark Renaissance, an evocative new biography, Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard aims to resurrect him

Greenblatt’s knowledge of the times, and of that remarkable phenomenon the Elizabethan theatre, makes this essential reading for anyone interested in Marlowe and his period

This evocative book offers a portrait of Elizabeth England: a time of paranoia, surveillance and violence, but also blistering creativity

[A] masterly biography … Each chapter tells its own fascinating story as the episodes and aspects of Marlowe’s life are presented with vivid imagination and expert commentary

An astounding biography … compelling and readable … Greenblatt’s accessible biography leaves the impression that if Marlowe hadn’t been ‘too relentlessly destructive’ and continued to write as radically and brilliantly as he did, it would be Christopher Marlowe, and not William Shakespeare, recognised as the greatest writer in English history

[A] riveting and evocative biography of Elizabethan playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe

A popular biography from Stephen Greenblatt, one of the most influential living scholars of early modern literature, is a literary event … [Greenblatt] writes beautifully about Marlowe’s adventures, and heartbreakingly about the 'unbridgeable distance' from his origins

As was clear from Will in the World, such speculative riffs are not a weakness but a mainspring of [Greenblatt’s] biographical approach .... Greenblatt’s speculations are too well informed to be idle

Greenblatt has the rare ability to write vivid narratives for the general public that rest on firm scholarly foundations. [Dark Renaissance] is a brilliant recreation of the world Marlowe inhabited

The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, Christopher Marlowe

Poor boy. Dark Star. Spy. Transgressor. Genius. 
 
In brutally repressive Elizabethan London, artists are frightened; foreigners are suspect; crowds revel in animal fights and public executions. Into this crude world comes an ambitious boy whose uncanny ear for poetry and radical streak would transform England forever. 
 
Enter Christopher Marlowe. A cobbler’s son from Canterbury, by the time of his murder in 1593 Marlowe is the most celebrated playwright of his time, setting the stage for an explosion of artistic creativity. Written by one of our greatest writers on the Elizabeth era, Dark Renaissance tells Marlowe’s story: a thrilling tale of daring, scandal and tragedy which reveals Marlowe to be a blazing talent who helped break England out of the cultural darkness and into the light.

Stephen Greenblatt

Praise for Dark Renaissance

What a magnificently thrilling read ... Dark Renaissance is a dazzling account of a dazzling life

A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist, Dark Renaissance conjures the Elizabethan age as a place of instability, succession anxiety, and burgeoning theatrical genius. Essential ...

This brilliant and riveting book brings Christopher Marlowe out of the shadows, capturing the remarkable and sudden life (and the no less sudden and violent death) of this extraordinary Elizabethan poet and p ...

What a magnificently thrilling read ... Dark Renaissance is a dazzling account of a dazzling life

A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist, Dark Renaissance conjures the Elizabethan age as a place of instability, succession anxiety, and burgeoning theatrical genius. Essential ...

This brilliant and riveting book brings Christopher Marlowe out of the shadows, capturing the remarkable and sudden life (and the no less sudden and violent death) of this extraordinary Elizabethan poet and p ...

What a magnificently thrilling read ... Dark Renaissance is a dazzling account of a dazzling life

A rigorous and sparkling exploration of what makes an artist, Dark Renaissance conjures the Elizabethan age as a place of instability, succession anxiety, and burgeoning theatrical genius. Essential ...

This brilliant and riveting book brings Christopher Marlowe out of the shadows, capturing the remarkable and sudden life (and the no less sudden and violent death) of this extraordinary Elizabethan poet and p ...

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6 books about truth and freedom of speech

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