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Title: Curiosity

Author: Alberto Manguel

Narrator: John McDonough

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-28-15

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

Alberto Manguel's The History of Reading was an international best seller translated into 34 languages and for which Manguel earned the Medicis Prize. Fourteen years later Manguel anchors his new book in the primal connection between reading and curiosity.

Tracing 25 centuries of human history, from the fourth century BC to the present day, Manguel dedicates each of his chapters to a single character - ranging from our best-known thinkers, scientists, and artists to seemingly minor figures of whom we know little more than one inspired utterance - in whom he identifies a particular way of asking the question "why?" Above all he aims to "awake in readers a consciousness of their own powers of enquiry and imagination, of their right to doubt and contest assumed answers, and of their responsibility in furthering the questions our ancestors were asking far away and long ago".

Members Reviews:

Great

Terrific book.Very astute.

Five Stars

A truly wonderful exploration of western civilization values that Alberto Manguel revisits through Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.

Five Stars

Knowledge acquirement through the centuries before your eyes!!!

good read slowly savor every bite

lovely book well written glad I purchased it

Curioser and Curioser

This is an odd book. Ostensibly about curiosity, Manguel uses this concept as a springboard for whatever takes his fancy, presumably organized by themes that make the title of each of the chapters.

On top of this nominal framework, the whole enterprise is diffused through the prism of Dante's Commedia. Why? Apparently Manguel becomes obsessed with various books at different points in his life, and discovering the riches of Dante later in life, he is currently immersed thinking through that great work, and by extension, so are we.

His tangents are often fascinating, sometimes less so, often seemingly tethered by the merest thread to the topic on hand. A chapter on the representation of thought by writing veers off into the Inca way of representing thought by a series of knots organized by shape and color known as quipu. A chapter on How Do We Question concentrates on various medieval commentators on the Talmud.

This book doesn't rigorously explore the concept of curiosity so much as embody its workings in the author.The reader travels along with him on his intellectual and often literary explorations, sometimes leading to open vistas, sometimes down a cul-de-sac. This is a frequently enlightening, usually entertaining journey, so long as there isn't any place you are in a hurry to get to.

N.B. I've been assured no cats were killed in the writing of this book.