Podcast #192: Stephen Greenblatt & Tony Kushner—The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

By NYPL Staff
November 28, 2017

The New York Public Library Podcast features your favorite writers, artists, and thinkers in smart talks and provocative conversations. Listen to some of our most engaging programs, discover new ideas, and celebrate the best of today’s culture.

Pulitzer Prize–winning literary historian Stephen Greenblatt came to the Library last September to speak with Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Tony Kushner about one of the most famous creation myths in all history—which also happens to be the subject of Greenblatt’s most recent book, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve.

Greenblatt describes the book as “a life history of one of the most extraordinary stories ever told.” Exploring the power of narrative to travel from myth into reality, he and Kushner traced the tale from its biblical origins through its imaginings in the minds of writers and artists from St. Augustine to Albrecht Dürer to John Milton. 

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