RESEARCH

Most of my research since receiving a Ph.D. (Columbia, 1986) has been devoted to the study of philosophy
in the seventeenth century. My main interests include Descartes and
Cartesian philosophy, Spinoza, and Leibniz. I have also examined antecedents of aspects of
early modern thought in medieval Latin philosophy and (especially with respect to Spinoza)
medieval Jewish philosophy.

The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil was published in 2008
by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The book is about Leibniz, Arnauld and Malebranche (with cameo appearances by
Descartes and Spinoza) and the seventeenth-century debate over theodicy and the proper conception of God. The paperback edition will be out with Princeton University Press later this year.

My current book projects are "A Book Forged in Hell": Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise
(for Princeton University Press); and Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed: An Introduction
(for Cambridge University Press).