A bright star of the Italian Renaissance, Girolamo Cardano was an internationally-sought-after astrologer, physician, and natural philosopher, a creator of modern algebra, and the inventor of the universal joint. Condemned by the Inquisition to house arrest in his old age, Cardano wrote The Book of My Life, an unvarnished and often outrageous account of his character and conduct. Whether discussing his sex life or his diet, the plots of academic rivals or meetings with supernatural beings, or his deep sorrow when his beloved son was executed for murder, Cardano displays the same unbounded curiosity that made him a scientific pioneer. At once picaresque adventure and campus comedy, curriculum vitae, and last will, The Book of My Life is an extraordinary Renaissance self-portrait—a book to set beside Montaigne's Essays and Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography.
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About the Author
GIROLAMO CARDANO (1501–1576) was born in Pavia, Italy. A professor of mathematics at Padua, and of medicine at Pavia and Bologna, he was the the author of more than a hundred books on subjects ranging from the natural sciences to medicine, history, and music.
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Perhaps best for rarefied tastes,
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This review is from: The Book of My Life (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
Girolamo Cardano's THE BOOK OF MY LIFE is a very typical entry into the lists of the New York Review of Books Classics: fairly obscure except to Renaissance historians, Cardano was an enormously important Italian mathemetician, scientist, and astrologer who also wrote an account of himself, his nature, and his life. Cardano's experiences in 16th-century Italy are extremely complex and colorful, and he recounts not only his problems with his children and his many enemies, but also his birthsign, his experiments, and his encounters with supernatural beings. The book isn't quite as enthralling as you hope it might be, and in the foreword Anthony Grafton comments on the limitations of this translation (which hearkens back to the 1920s)--given this, you wonder why NYRB didn't commission a new and more faithful translation. The book is intriguing enough but doesn't exactly pass the time quite in the enjoyable way the NYRB Classics seem to be intended to do.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
MY NATIVE country is the Duchy of Milan; the town in which the family of the Cardani had its origins is twenty-four miles distant from the city. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
College of Physicians, Cardinal Morone, Divine Providence, Girolamo Cardano, Santa Maria, Book Total, King of France, University of Pavia New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
MY NATIVE country is the Duchy of Milan; the town in which the family of the Cardani had its origins is twenty-four miles distant from the city. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
College of Physicians, Cardinal Morone, Divine Providence, Girolamo Cardano, Santa Maria, Book Total, King of France, University of Pavia New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 29
books:
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100
books
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- Opera Omnia by Girolamo Cardano in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Wheat that Springeth Green (New York Review Books Classics) by J.F. Powers in Back Matter
- The Other House (New York Review Books) by Henry James in Back Matter
- The Fierce and Beautiful World (New York Review Books Classics) by Andrey Platonov in Back Matter
- Selected Stories (New York Review Books Classics) by Robert Walser in Back Matter
See all 29 books this book cites
- Satan's Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance Demonology by Armando Maggi on 12 pages
- Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Studies on the History of Society and Culture) by Paula Findlen on 5 pages
- The Book of My Life: De Vita Propia Liber by Jerome Cardan on 4 pages
- Tales of Physicists and Mathematicians by Simon Gindikin on 4 pages
- John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature by Deborah E. Harkness on page 46, page 113, and page 114
See all 100 books citing this book
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