Leon Battista Alberti: Writer and Humanist
Martin McLaughlin. Princeton Univ., $35 (360p) ISBN 978-0-691-17472-3
In this scholarly study, McLaughlin (Italo Calvino), an Italian professor emeritus at Oxford University, examines 15th-century Italian polymath Alberti’s “significance as a writer” through close readings of his treatises, dialogues, and autobiography. Comparing Petrarch’s outlook on the art and philosophy of antiquity to Alberti’s, as outlined in the 1435 treatise De pictura, McLaughlin suggests Alberti was less concerned with the restoration of classical texts than his Renaissance forefather and more willing to believe that the works of such contemporary artists as Filippo Brunelleschi rivaled the achievements of the ancients. Alberti pioneered the mixture of Latin genres with Italian vernacular, McLaughlin contends, describing how the dialogue
De familia, written in the Tuscan vernacular between 1433 and 1443, tackles contemporaneous concerns about the purpose of family while using a Latin form and “drawing on a vast range of classical sources.” McLaughlin knows his subject inside and out, but pedantic discussions of inaccuracies in 19th-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt’s biographical writings on Alberti and the “links between Alberti’s architectural theories in De re aedificatoria and his practice as an architect” won’t hold much appeal for readers not already invested in the Italian polymath. This is chiefly for students of the Italian Renaissance. (June)
Saudi Arabia, her fascination with her newborn baby brother in England, and her difficulty adjusting to American teenage mores in the suburbs of New York. “Life abroad... inevitably chipped away at the pieces I carried of my homeland,” Mattoo writes of the emptiness she felt as her family shuffled between apartments and hotel rooms. But her loving snapshots of relatives and childhood memories preserve what pieces remain, and as the narrative unfolds, acceptance sets in. “I might live with this feeling of hovering between years and places... for the rest of my life,” Mattoo muses in the final pages. “So I suppose I’d better get comfortable with it.” Distinguished by its sharp wit and beating heart, this is a balm for wanderers of all stripes. Agent: Erin Malone, WME. (June) parole, Barry became a minor celebrity. Jobb tells Barry’s tale with both rigor and pathos, painting a tender portrait of a crook who was never fearsome (one victim described him as “charming”). This is liable to steal readers’ hearts. Agent: Hilary MacMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. (June)
rulers” of public discourse, according to this fiery debut investigation. DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), starts with an insightful account of how social media’s mechanics promote sensationalism, with charismatic personalities tailoring their output toward stimulating content, which gets boosted by algorithms designed to maximize engagement. The result, she contends, is a crisis of social consensus as users get isolated in delusional ideological bubbles. DiResta applies this framework to several social media controversies and campaigns, especially Trump supporters’ 2020 election denialism and Covid-19 vaccine conspiracies. She also rebuts right-wing critics of social media platforms, arguing that their complaints of being censored are overblown and mainly an attempt to “work the refs.” She particularly takes to task Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi, who in reporting and congressional testimony accused her and SIO of pressuring Twitter (now X) to censor millions of tweets; she calls these allegations “lies.” Her smallbore recommendations—disclosure requirements for paid political speech by influencers and tweaking algorithms to boost civility over vitriol—do indeed fall short of censorship, though her call for “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” will likely still come off as shadow-banning to her accusers. Nevertheless, it’s a well-informed take on what ails social media, and a vigorous riposte to conservative narratives of persecution by Big Tech. (June)