Lucretius III: a history of motion is the final volume in a sequence of three studies by Thomas Nail on the De rerum natura (DRN). He proposes an innovative and politically engaged essay on DRN 5 and 6. Unafraid of anachronisms (which makes the book all the more stimulating and refreshing), Nail persuasively links Lucretius with dialectical materialism, ecology, queer theory, modern literature, biology and physics. While alluding to Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf and Michel Serres (among several other authors), Nail proposes a close reading of selected passages from DRN 5 and 6, and offers his own translations of them. In addition, the book contains several figures which enrich the discussion (on a personal note, I found the figures of Minoan artwork particularly valuable). Yet the originality of Nail’s study lies in revealing how Lucretius’ ideas remain relevant in contemporary debates on pressing issues. Nail suggests that many of the structural problems that we are facing in the world (and even more acutely in the Global South) result from a linear, anthropocentric and idealist vision of nature and history. Indeed, capitalist discourse (which has generated climate collapse, the pandemic, widespread poverty and different kinds of inequality) is largely fueled by the myths of eternity, exponential growth and metaphysical salvation. However, as Nail brilliantly argues in his Introduction (and throughout the entire book), Lucretius’ kinetic views on matter, nature and the swerve forge a radically alternative approach to history. Just like matter, history is also material, indeterminate and tends towards dissolution.