Eclectic HumanDec 19
#AmReading Dark Renaissance by #StephenGreenblatt.
Ostensibly a biography of Christopher Marlowe, it conjures up the turbulent world of Elizabethan politics, religion, and learning in all its cruelty and glory.
A paean to dangerous ideas and "the seductive, subversive, magical power of books."
#Bookstodon
https://apnews.com/article/dark-renaissance-stephen-greenblatt-book-review-f54e612b655ce0a5700d16bee501865c
'Dark Renaissance' review: Christopher Marlowe's life explored

Stephen Greenblatt is a Renaissance scholar well known for his biography of William Shakespeare, “Will in the World.” Now the Harvard professor has written a riveting work about the Bard’s contemporary and rival, Christopher Marlowe. Associated Press book reviewer Ann Levin says “Dark Renaissance” is an essential guide to understanding how a poor cobbler’s son from Canterbury became a brilliant poet and playwright whose dramatic masterpieces, including “Doctor Faustus” and “Tamburlaine,” sparked a literary renaissance in Elizabethan England. “Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival” is being published by W.W. Norton.

AP News
Chuckling DuckDec 1

In periods of political and social unrest, time has a strange way of buckling, with the present seeming to collapse into the past or the past bursting its containment and inhabiting the present.

Stephen Greenblatt
The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve
#SundaySentence #bookstodon #AmReading #StephenGreenblatt

B.W. ConwayNov 12

"The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.”―Stephen Greenblatt

#BookLovers #Bookish #AmReading #BookCommunity #BookRecommendations #IndieAuthor #BookDiscussion #quote #delusion #StephenGreenblatt

petersuberSep 9, 2025

From #StephenGreenblatt, "We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/opinion/universities-science-trump-china.html

A few of his points:

* Sputnik (1957) triggered bipartisan support for massive new spending on US research. Southern conservatives worried that feds would use the money to desegregate universities, & barred the govt from dictating curriculum, administration, or hiring. The Trump admin is now conditioning federal funds on precisely those demands prohibited by post-Sputnik federal law.

* While the US was racing ahead on research funding, Soviet science was held back by the influence of Lysenkoism. Today, US research is controlled by people like RFKJr, "a kind of Lysenko lite".

* After decades of generous federal spending, "by the 1990s, American universities had become global cultural icons — envied for their intellectual breadth, celebrated for their academic freedom & eagerly sought after by international students who viewed them as the apex of open inquiry & prestige. The government hadn't intended to create autonomous, cosmopolitan knowledge institutions, but the scale of its investment — & the relative insulation of universities from direct political control — helped to make those institutions into supreme civilizational achievements."

* Just before Trump took office, 8 of the top 10 universities by research publications were American. Today, one is American, one is German, & the rest are Chinese.

#DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Opinion | We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself

As China threatens to overtake U.S. leadership in science and technology, America has responded by sabotaging its own engines of progress.

The New York Times
akenygSep 7, 2023
Reading #TheSwerve by #stephengreenblatt and realizing how much the main character Poggio’s mourning for the loss of classical #culturalheritage in #earlymodern 15th century Italy resembles my own mourning for the loss of the Swedish catholic cultural heritage that was crushed by #gustavvasa and the iconoclastic #reformation.