The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

A compelling, all-encompassing story of myth, theology and belief ... He delves deftly and lucidly into theology... Fascinating -- Sam Leith * Spectator * 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 -- Tim Whitmarsh * Guardian * Fascinating -- Christina Borg * Sunday Times * Enthralling, thrilling Along the way, there is an often hilarious account of scholastic efforts to rationalise the myths illogic, and an array of entertaining heresies What gives Greenblatts intellectual adventure its tension and excitement is a sense of his own divided loyalties -- Peter Conrad * Observer * Erudite, wide-ranging, thought-provoking and elegantly fashioned -- Darragh McManus * Irish Independent * 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. -- Jonathan Wright * BBC History magazine * This is a learned book, but Greenblatts 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 -- John Carey * Sunday Times * Greenblatt is utterly engaging. -- Miri Rubin * Prospect * 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 -- John Gray * New Statesman *

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of twelve 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. He is General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and of The Norton Shakespeare, and has edited seven collections of literary criticism.