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TUESDAY
Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone are book people. And so it seems fitting that the authors of Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World, Slightly Chipped: Footnotes in Booklore, and Warmly Inscribed: The New England Forger and Other Book Tales should be the ones to reintroduce those of us who care about such things to Michael Servetus. A scientist and theologian, Servetus was 42 when he was burned at the stake for heresy in 1553—sentenced to death for writing Christianismi Restitutio (The Restoration of Christianity), a polemic, John Calvin-#antagonizing work that asserted that God existed in all people and things (and also contained a description of pulmonary circulation, a discovery credited to William Harvey 75 years later). What was thought to be the last copy of Restitutio was bound to Servetus’ body as he was burned alive—the rest, as the Goldstones remark, were “zealously hunted down and destroyed”—but three copies of the book survived. In Out of the Flames, the Goldstones recount the life of Servetus and the history of his monumental work, and they follow the paths of the remaining copies through the centuries. They also provide a lot of background for those of us who may be a bit fuzzy on the details of, say, the Reformation, the Inquisition, and the invention of the printing press. Out of the Flames is an engrossing story about independent thought, fatal conviction, and the abiding power of books to raise a ruckus. The Goldstones appear at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 5, at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. (Jennifer Agresta)