A fast-paced narrative about the world-famous libertine Giacomo Casanova, from celebrated biographer Leo Damrosch
Leo Damrosch Books
Leo Damrosch is a distinguished American author and professor whose work delves deeply into intellectual history and literary studies. His academic focus centers on pivotal periods such as the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Puritanism, informing his insightful analyses. Damrosch's books offer fresh perspectives on significant historical and literary figures and movements, enriching our understanding of the evolution of thought and art. His writings are celebrated for their erudition and their ability to illuminate complex ideas for a broad readership.
Jonathan Swift
- 592 pages
- 21 hours of reading
From a master biographer and leading scholar of eighteenth-century literature comes an award-winning new portrait of the greatest satirist in the English language
The life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment’s shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy—and the first to tell his own story. In his vivid autobiography Histoire de Ma Vie, he recorded at least a hundred and twenty love affairs, as well as dramatic sagas of duels, swindles, arrests, and escapes. He knew kings and an empress, Catherine the Great, and most of the famous writers of the time, including Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. Drawing on seldom used materials, including the original French and Italian primary sources, and probing deeply into the psychology, self-conceptions, and self-deceptions of one of the world’s most famous con men and seducers, Leo Damrosch offers a gripping, mature, and devastating account of an Enlightenment man, freed from the bounds of moral convictions.
The Club
- 488 pages
- 18 hours of reading
Prize-winning biographer Leo Damrosch tells the story of the Club, a group of extraordinary writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern