Leibniz an intellectual biography

In this remarkable book (hereafter, Leibniz), Maria Rosa Antognazza has set herself a truly herculean task: to provide a unifying narrative of Leibniz's life and works.

The task is daunting because Leibniz's theoretical and practical projects were unprecedented in scope, covering vast areas of human endeavor:

From philosophy and mathematics narrowly construed they extended across the encyclopedia of the sciences and beyond: to astronomy, physics, chemistry, and geology; to botany, psychology, medicine, and natural history; to jurisprudence, ethics, and political philosophy; to history and antiquities, German, European and Chinese languages; to linguistics, etymology, philology, and poetry; to theology both natural and revealed; and beyond contemplative pursuits altogether a wide range of practical affairs: from legal reform to the reunification of the churches, from diplomacy and practical politics to institutional reform, technological impro