Catalog

Record Details

Search Results

Catalog Search

Search Results

Refine Search

Search Results filters

Filtered by:

Locations

Adult New Non-Fiction ×

Additional search filters and navigation

Figuring Book
Book | First edition. | Pantheon Books, New York : c2019.

  • 1 of 1 Copy Available at Libraries in Niagara Cooperative (Show)
  • 0 of 0 Copies Available at Niagara-on-the-Lake Library System
  • 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Place Hold
Branch Call Number Location Holdable? Status
About

Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries—beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists—mostly women, mostly queer—whose public contribution have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson. Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman—and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.
Loading...
Details

  • ISBN: 9781524748135
  • ISBN: 1524748137
  • Physical Description: 578 pages ; 24 cm.
  • Edition: First edition.
  • Publisher: New York : Pantheon Books, c2019.
  • Bibliography, etc. Note:
    Includes bibliographical references and index.

Additional Resources