AustLit

'Each title and topic references law in some way, so the first-time reader may be intimidated by the regulatory tone before finding that there are delightful laws for broccoli and rubber gloves between weightier treatments of love and the passage of time. Law evokes perceptions of truth and consequence in the sciences as well, and while a glum magistrate may have cast his veto in the Senate, Pliny the Elder was across town compiling his Naturalis Historia, an encyclopedia not so different from The Law of Poetry. While Rome stamped its brand of law on justice and the stars, something corrosive was stirring in its roots.' (Publication abstract)