The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Life of Leibniz in Seven Pivotal Days [Hardcover]

A biography of the polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz told through seven critical days spanning his life and revealing his contributions to our modern world. Its hard to imagine how the great German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz packed his dizzying array of accomplishments, inventions, wanderings, and insights into one life. Now renowned intellectual historian and director of the Leibniz Archives Michael Kempe has distilled that wonderous life into a mere seven days. With humor, intelligence, and lively prose, Kempe carefully builds these seven slices of life into a breathtaking portrait of one of the most fascinating and impactful minds of the early modern world. A unique biography about one of the worlds most brilliant polymaths. [A] first-rate presentation of Leibnizs complex system of ideas?and breathes life into a figure of august remoteness& captures the kaleidoscopic quality of Leibnizs thought& Leibniz emerges as a cracked genius, prone to inscrutable philosophical speculations but capable of almost prophetic insights into the future.