A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change

from Skybalon

A fairly lightweight combination of history, sociology and biography that mostly works. If the book has a fundamental problem, it is with the author's choice to emphasize the biography part. Ultimately this ends up being about a dude who was wrong way more than he was right, was a tireless self-p...

from kaulsu

Athanasius Kircher is an interesting subject, but the amount of conjecture and the repetitive narrative used by Glassie bogs down the reader. On the other hand, the societal and cultural picture of the 17th century Glassie provided was quite interesting. And, just when you are sure that any and a...

from JBD1

John Glassie has written an absorbing and enjoyable biography of one of history's great characters, the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. The author of more than thirty books on a wide range of topics (from music to hieroglyphics to snakebite to China to the nature of the interior of the earth)...

from JBD1

John Glassie has written an absorbing and enjoyable biography of one of history's great characters, the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. The author of more than thirty books on a wide range of topics (from music to hieroglyphics to snakebite to China to the nature of the interior of the earth)...