Angels and Ages: Lincoln, Darwin, and the Birth of the Modern Age
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.85 (700 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0307455300 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-12-23 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
An excellent book if you like tight reasoning An excellent book if you like tight reasoning. At my stage in life, I don't. So an impressive document, kudos to the author for his achievement. 3 and a half stars The marriage between Darwin and Lincoln which Gopnik makes the uniting principle of this book doesn't work. The essays would have been better off presented separately--say, in a magazine like The New Yorker, which, as it happens, is how they started life. That both men were born on the same day of the same year, and that both were so influential (Darwin particularly so) in their time and after, is not sufficient to overcome the artificiality of so joining them (and only them).This short book is well worth reading (if you missed it in magazine form) for the truly fascinating and poignant first essay on Darwi. "Angels and Ages: Update" according to Ann Seymour. This book nicely illuminates two pivotal 19C figures, characterizing Lincoln as pragmatic and plain-spoken, Darwin, the ultimate keen observer. Considering the North's industrialization and disapproval of the South's selling cotton to England, and, above all, the slavery issue, the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation probably would have occurred with ot without Lincoln. But he started a school of self-expression that moved away from Henry James and toward the eventual Ernest Hemmingway.As Gropnik makes clear, however, Darwin revolutionized human thought.Here's the latest, for those who love Darwin:A too
Born by cosmic coincidence on the same day in 1809 and separated by an ocean, Lincoln and Darwin coauthored our sense of history and our understanding of man’s place in the world. Above all we see them as thinkers and writers, making and witnessing the great changes in thought that mark truly modern times.. Here Gopnik reveals these two men as they really were: family men and social climbers, ambitious manipulators and courageous adventurers, grieving parents and brilliant scholars. In this captivating double life, Adam Gopnik searches for the men behind the icons of emancipation and evolution
(Jan. But the comparison of the two men feels like a stretch, and Gopniks notion that the very idea of democracy was precarious until Lincoln freed the slaves isnt wholly convincing. All rights reserved. Gopnik notes that it is not what they have in common with each other that matters; it is what they have in common with us. And that commonality lies in the modern way of speaking (plainly) and thinking (scientific and liberal in the broad sense). 30)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. . Most successfully, Gopnik underscores the importance of eloquence in spreading new ideas, and his notion that Lincoln and Darwin exemplify the modern predicament—that humans must live in the space between what