- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: NYRB Classics (Oct 31 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1590170164
- ISBN-13: 978-1590170168
- Product Dimensions: 12.8 x 1.9 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 340 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #807,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
A bright star of the Italian Renaissance, Girolamo Cardano was an internationally-sought-after astrologer, physician, and natural philosopher, a creator of modern algebra, and the inventor of the universal joint. Condemned by the Inquisition to house arrest in his old age, Cardano wrote The Book of My Life, an unvarnished and often outrageous account of his character and conduct. Whether discussing his sex life or his diet, the plots of academic rivals or meetings with supernatural beings, or his deep sorrow when his beloved son was executed for murder, Cardano displays the same unbounded curiosity that made him a scientific pioneer. At once picaresque adventure and campus comedy, curriculum vitae, and last will, The Book of My Life is an extraordinary Renaissance self-portrait—a book to set beside Montaigne's Essays and Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
MY NATIVE country is the Duchy of Milan; the town in which the family of the Cardani had its origins is twenty-four miles distant from the city. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
MY NATIVE country is the Duchy of Milan; the town in which the family of the Cardani had its origins is twenty-four miles distant from the city. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Perhaps best for rarefied tastes,
By Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Book of My Life (Paperback)
Girolamo Cardano's THE BOOK OF MY LIFE is a very typical entry into the lists of the New York Review of Books Classics: fairly obscure except to Renaissance historians, Cardano was an enormously important Italian mathemetician, scientist, and astrologer who also wrote an account of himself, his nature, and his life. Cardano's experiences in 16th-century Italy are extremely complex and colorful, and he recounts not only his problems with his children and his many enemies, but also his birthsign, his experiments, and his encounters with supernatural beings. The book isn't quite as enthralling as you hope it might be, and in the foreword Anthony Grafton comments on the limitations of this translation (which hearkens back to the 1920s)--given this, you wonder why NYRB didn't commission a new and more faithful translation. The book is intriguing enough but doesn't exactly pass the time quite in the enjoyable way the NYRB Classics seem to be intended to do.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 26 of 29 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Perhaps best for rarefied tastes,
By Jay Dickson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Book of My Life (Paperback)
Girolamo Cardano's THE BOOK OF MY LIFE is a very typical entry into the lists of the New York Review of Books Classics: fairly obscure except to Renaissance historians, Cardano was an enormously important Italian mathemetician, scientist, and astrologer who also wrote an account of himself, his nature, and his life. Cardano's experiences in 16th-century Italy are extremely complex and colorful, and he recounts not only his problems with his children and his many enemies, but also his birthsign, his experiments, and his encounters with supernatural beings. The book isn't quite as enthralling as you hope it might be, and in the foreword Anthony Grafton comments on the limitations of this translation (which hearkens back to the 1920s)--given this, you wonder why NYRB didn't commission a new and more faithful translation. The book is intriguing enough but doesn't exactly pass the time quite in the enjoyable way the NYRB Classics seem to be intended to do.
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