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The
Vanished Library A Wonder of the Ancient World Luciano Canfora $18.95
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"A colorful tale of royal rivalry and patronage, of strange accidents and coincidences. . . . The detective work is every bit as fascinating as the brilliant narrative which it supports."--Washington Post Book World
"Canfora guides us through the labyrinth of traditions about the library, reawakening for us the myth of the world's memory safeguarded in a single place for an élite of intellectuals."--Préfaces, Paris
"The Vanished Library is an extraordinarily innovative work of ancient history. It is not just that the book engages with cultural debates outside the field of Classics. Canfora is also experimenting with new ways of writing the history of the Classical world. . . . [The Vanished Library] is staking a claim for the reintegration of ancient history into the contemporary cultural agenda. . . . In the Anglo-American context such reintegration is definitely overdue."--Mary Beard, London Review of Books
"This mystery has awaited, for a long time, a historian with the temperament of a writer as well as that of a scholar, and it has found its ideal match in Luciano Canfora."--La Stampa, Turin