The Polymath

“An admirable mixture of industry and erudition.”—Robert Wilson, Wall Street Journal

"A few pages at a time about interdisciplinary giants such as Leibniz, Diderot and Germaine de Stael can be energizing."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post

"In a mind-stretching history, Peter Burke describes '500 western polymaths' from the half-millennium since Leonardo da Vinci."—Andrew Robinson, Nature.com

"An absorbing group portrait and intellectual history."—Kirkus Reviews

"[A] mind-stretching and thought-provoking history, which spans the half-millennium that followed the life of the most wide-ranging polymath of all, Leonardo da Vinci."—Andrew Robinson, Science

“An absorbing and polymathic account of an important intellectual species. This is a significant and timely book, because in illustrating why our culture needs polymaths as well as specialists it prompts us to think afresh about the aims of education and what we need to better inform our public conversation.”—A. C. Grayling

“As well as illuminating general patterns, Burke’s polymaths fizz with their own energy, obsessiveness, and life.”—Neil Kenny,author of The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany

"The author and his subjects undoubtedly inhabit a shared world, which Burke explains to the rest of us with remarkable insight and understanding, providing both historical depth and remarkable cross-disciplinary breadth.”— Paul Duguid, co-author of The Social Life of Information

“In this kaleidoscopic account, Peter Burke unfolds the amazing stories of “monsters of erudition,” tracing the fate of the universal thinker in a world flooding with information.”— Daniel Rosenberg, co-author of Cartographies of Time