Charles Freeman makes a spirited case for why we should peer backwards in his sumptuous work ... The Reopening of the Western Mind picks up velocity once Freeman pivots to the Italian Renaissance; and while this is well trampled ground, he lays out his arguments in dazzling detail ... Freeman connects all the dots in The Reopening of the Western Mind, opening many doors, many minds, in this meticulous, illuminating book.
Besides being hugely thought-provoking, this inquiry is a transparently personal work built around particular geographies, thinkers, and epiphanies that have animated Freeman’s rich intellectual life.
General readers may be overwhelmed by the breadth and depth, but specialists will delight in the considered, comprehensive details of Western European triumphs, discoveries, and setbacks. As ambitious as it is informative, this will have historians of all stripes rapt.
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