★Almost 40,000 copies sold.
★Piergiorgio Odifreddi is a best-selling author of more than 150,000 copies sold, he won the important Italian popular science award Galieo Prize!

Two thousand years ago, a man looked at the culture of the future, and revealed a great part of it in a visionary and futuristic work: this man was the poet Lucretius, the work the poem De rerum natura.
All the great current scientific theories (physico-chemical atomism, psychological materialism, biological evolutionism) are presented and defended in his cantos. All the ancient humanistic superstitions (the Epicurean philosophy, unrealistic literature, not Deist religion) are criticized and attacked in his invectives.
The De rerum natura is therefore, at the same time, a work of popular science and a laic testimony: these are exactly the two interpretations of the world to which the “impertinent mathematician” Piergiorgio Odifreddi linked his name to. So, who better than him could lead the reader through the meander of the ancient poem, and prove that modern science is nothing but a series of footnotes to Lucretius’ poem?
The Way Things Are is a new translation in prose of Lucretius’ masterpiece enriched by Odifreddi’s comments, demonstrating both ideal or real connections, with our whole humanistic and scientific culture.
Thanks to this work we discover that the words of a literary classic and the thoughts of contemporary scientists could converge in offering us a magnificent view of the world

Piergiorgio Odifreddi (1950) studied mathematics in Italy, the United States and the Soviet Union, and has taught logic at the University of Turin and at Cornell University. He writes for La Repubblica and Le Scienze and in 2011 he won the Galileo Prize for science popularization. His previous books has been sold in Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Catalan and Turkish.