Books > Biography > Science, technology & engineering
|
Buy Now
Angels and Ages - Lincoln, Darwin, and the Birth of the Modern Age (Paperback)
Loot Price: R430
Discovery Miles 4 300
You Save: R65
(13%)
|
|
Angels and Ages - Lincoln, Darwin, and the Birth of the Modern Age (Paperback)
(sign in to rate)
List price R495
Loot Price R430
Discovery Miles 4 300
You Save R65 (13%)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
|
On a memorable day in human history, February 12, 1809, two babies
were born an ocean apart: Abraham Lincoln in a one-room Kentucky
log cabin; Charles Darwin on an English country estate. It was a
time of backward-seeming notions, when almost everyone still
accepted the biblical account of creation as the literal truth and
authoritarianism as the most natural and viable social order. But
by the time both men died, the world had changed: ordinary people
understood that life on earth was a story of continuous evolution,
and the Civil War had proved that a democracy could fight for
principles and endure. And with these signal insights much else had
changed besides. Together, Darwin and Lincoln had become midwives
to the spirit of a new world, a new kind of hope and faith.
Searching for the men behind the icons of emancipation and
evolution, Adam Gopnik shows us, in this captivating double life,
Lincoln and Darwin as they really were: family men and social
climbers; ambitious manipulators and courageous adventurers; the
living husband, father, son, and student behind each myth. How do
we reconcile Lincoln, the supremely good man we know, with the
hardened commander who wittingly sent tens of thousands of young
soldiers to certain death? Why did the relentlessly rational Darwin
delay publishing his "Great Idea" for almost twenty years? How did
inconsolable grief at the loss of a beloved child change each man?
And what comfort could either find--for himself or for a society
now possessed of a sadder, if wiser, understanding of our
existence? Such human questions and their answers are the stuff of
this book.
Above all, we see Lincoln and Darwin as thinkers and writers--as
makers andwitnesses of the great change in thought that marks truly
modern times: a hundred years after the Enlightenment, the old rule
of faith and fear finally yielding to one of reason, argument, and
observation not merely as intellectual ideals but as a way of life;
the judgment of divinity at last submitting to the verdicts of
history and time. Lincoln considering human history, Darwin
reflecting on deep time--both reshaped our understanding of what
life is and how it attains meaning. And they invented a new
language to express that understanding. "Angels and Ages" is an
original and personal account of the creation of the liberal
voice--of the way we live now and the way we talk at home and in
public. Showing that literary eloquence is essential to liberal
civilization, Adam Gopnik reveals why our heroes should be
possessed by the urgency of utterance, obsessed by the need to see
for themselves, and endowed with the gift to speak for us all.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.