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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today it's my pleasure to have as my guest, Stephen Greenblatt.

His new book is The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. His last book won both

a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. That book was The Swerve. His other books include

Will and the World. He wrote a book on Hamlet. I would say that his books

get more and more emphatically, elaborately readable. And you say at the beginning of the book

that we remember the story of Adam and Eve because it's better

than other stories, that it's memorable because it's memorable.

And yet there are millions of people who feel that we remember it because it's truthful.

They've made their deductions about the beginnings of time from the story of Adam and Eve and the story of creation.

Well, it's true, Michael, that some 40% of our fellow U.S. citizens, if one can believe,

the Poles, profess to believe in the literal truth of this origin story.

And presumably the world over, there are many more Christians and a significant number of Muslims and Jews

as well, for whom this story says how we got to be the way we are, who we are and how we

got here.

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