Defenders of the Text

“A sheer delight—a real feast of intellectual scholarship and a hilarious account of the mannerist fantasia that was the European intellectual scene in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”—Osywn Murray, The Times Literary Supplement

“Grafton writes with an admirable clarity and zest… The kind of scholarly book that an interested non-specialist can read with pleasure and a sense of intellectual discovery.”—The Washington Post Book World

“This excellent book is a major contribution to scholarship. It is highly original, both in the problems it formulates and in the solutions it offers, acute in its reasoning, and elegant, sharp, and often witty.”—Paul Oskar Kristeller, New Criterion

“Grafton writes with enviable lucidity and wit… This [book] will give enormous stimulus and pleasure.”—Brian Vickers, The Times Higher Education Supplement

“Delightful, fresh, well-written, stimulating, provocative, irreverent, and most informative. [Grafton] has contributed to our understanding of ‘the making of the modern mind.’”—Richard Popkin, Journal of Interdisciplinary History