Donald Phillip Verene is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy and Director of the Institute for Vico Studies at Emory University and a fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. He is the author of books including Vico's "New Science": A Philosophical Commentary; Vico's Science of Imagination; and The Art of Humane Education; and he is the coeditor of Giambattista Vico: Keys to the "New Science", all from Cornell.

No mere short notice can do justice to this indispensable guide to Vico's thought. It rescues him from his comparative neglect in histories of modern Western philosophy and emphasizes his seminal if muffled contribution to our understanding of the human mind and the history of culture. Departing from the conventional relegation of Vico to cyclical philosophy of history, the author highlights Vico's role as rhetorician in a philosophy for which rhetoric is no mere embellishment or reflection of truths previously produced by the rational intellect, but is the very source of human knowledge.(Religious Studies Review) The first book-length study in English to allow the genius that is Vico to come forth.(Philosophy and Rhetoric) Verene's sympathetic study is a useful contribution to the understanding of this often misconceived and still very provocative thinker.(Review of Metaphysics)