Giordano Bruno

Whatever else Bruno was, he was wild-minded and extreme, and Rowland communicates this, together with a sense of the excitement that his ideas gave him.... It's that feeling for the explosiveness of the period, and Rowland's admiration of Bruno for participating in it - indeed, dying for it - that is the central and most cherishable quality of the biography. - Joan Acocella, New Yorker Rowland tells this great story in moving, vivid prose, concentrating as much on Bruno's thought as on his life.... His restless mind, as she makes clear, not only explored but transformed the heavens. - Anthony Grafton, New York Review of Books Bruno seems to have been an unclassifiable mixture of foul-mouthed Neapolitan mountebank, loquacious poet, religious reformer, scholastic philosopher, and slightly wacky astronomer. - Anthony Gottlieb, New York Times Book Review A marvelous feat of scholarship.... This is intellectual biography at its best. - Peter N. Miller, New Republic An excellent starting point for anyone who wants to rediscover the historical figure concealed beneath the cowl on Campo de' Fiori. - Paula Findlen, Nation A loving and thoughtful account of Bruno's life and thought, satires and sonnets, dialogues and lesson plans, vagabond days and star-spangled nights.... Ingrid D. Rowland has her reasons for preferring Bruno to Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, even Galileo and Leonardo, and they're good ones. - John Leonard, Harper's