RaveThe Los Angeles Review of Books...a gripping story about storytelling, a tale spun by the fortunes of one of the greatest stories ever told ...'Where do I (or "we") come from?' Because of its singularly powerful response to that question, the story of Adam and Eve remains an indispensable narrative achievement, crucial to understanding not only storytelling itself, but also the realities of 'human responsibility and human vulnerability' on which the story touches ... That Greenblatt is himself an extraordinary storyteller will come as a surprise to no one familiar with his books ...by telling us the story of the rise and fall of Adam and Eve, Greenblatt wants to regale us not with the tale of Adam and Eve, but with the story of the story of Adam and Eve, the rise and fall of our need for the tale itself ... The trajectory of his book bends toward seeing Adam and Eve not as a divinely revealed moral lesson, but as an ongoing attempt to make sense of reality, tumbling into the modern natural and human sciences.