The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci »

In 1577, the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci set out from Italy to bring Christian faith and Western thought to Ming dynasty China. To capture the complex emotional and religious drama of Ricci's extraodinary life, Jonathan Spence has shifted away from conventional biographical techniques, and he relates his subject's life to several images that Ricci himself created - four images derived from events in the Bible and others from a book on the art of memory that Ricci wrote in Chinese and circulated among members of the Ming dynasty's elite. A rich and compelling narrative about a remarkable life, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci is also a significant work of global history, juxtaposing the world of Counter-Reformation Europe with that of Ming China.