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The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci

Jonathan D. Spence

Recommended by 1 person on the record.

The bar next to each date shows how long ago it was said: 6d is days, 4yr is years.

Cosma Rohilla Shalizi liked it affiliate
An engaging, and ultimately moving, portrait of both an individual and an age. Reading it makes me wonder at my own memory practices. You probably need some grounding in the history of both early modern Europe and early modern China to really get it, but if you have that background, it's a beautiful depiction of the work of cultural interchange.

on bactra.org · 30 Sep 2021

Find it on Open Library →  ·  This book on rcmnd →

That little bar

It says how long ago something was said, so you can tell last month from 2014 without doing the arithmetic. Full and green is recent; it drains and cools as the date gets older, and empties completely at about 6 years.

A striped bar means the date itself is an estimate — the source did not carry an exact one. An entry with no date at all gets no bar.