Overview

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was the Benjamin Franklin of Europe, a “universal genius” who ranged across many fields and made breakthroughs in most of them. Leibniz invented calculus (independently from Isaac Newton), conceptualized the modern computer, and developed the famous thesis that the existing world is the best that God could have created. In The Best of All Possible Worlds, historian and Leibniz expert Michael Kempe takes us on a journey into the mind and inventions of a man whose contributions are perhaps without parallel in human history. Structured around seven crucial days in Leibniz’s life, Kempe’s account allows us to observe him in the act of thinking and creating, and gives us a deeper understanding of his broad-reaching intellectual endeavors. On October 29, 1675, we find him in Paris, diligently working from his bed amid a sea of notes, and committing the integral symbol—the basis of his calculus—to paper. On April 17, 1703, Leibniz is in Berlin, writing a letter reporting that a Jesuit priest living in China has discovered how to use Leibniz’s binary number system to decipher an ancient Chinese system of writing. One day in August 1714, Leibniz enjoys a Viennese coffee while drawing new connections among ontology and biology and mathematics. The Best of All Possible Worlds transports us to an age defined by rational optimism and a belief in progress, and will endure as one of the few authoritative accounts of Leibniz’s life available in English.

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9781324093947

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"""It’s 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."" -- William Egginton, Author of The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality"

Author Information

Michael Kempe is the director of the Leibniz Research Center and the Leibniz-Archiv in Hannover and teaches early modern history at the University of Konstanz. Marshall Yarbrough is a writer, musician, and German-to-English translator. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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