From their acclaimed biographer, a final, powerful book about how Emerson, Thoreau, and William James forged resilience from devastating loss, changing the course of American thought In Three Roads Back, Robert Richardson, the author of magisterial biographies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James, tells the connected stories of how these foundational American writers and thinkers dealt with personal tragedies early in their careers. For Emerson, it was the death of his young wife and, eleven years later, his five-year-old son; for Thoreau, it was the death of his brother; and for James, it was the death of his beloved cousin Minnie Temple. Filled with rich biographical detail and unforgettable passages from the journals and letters of Emerson, Thoreau, and James, these vivid and moving stories of loss and hard-fought resilience show how the writers' responses to these deaths helped spur them on to their greatest work, influencing the birth and course of American literature and philosophy. In reaction to his traumatic loss, Emerson lost his Unitarian faith and found solace in nature. Thoreau, too, leaned on nature and its regenerative power, discovering that "death is the law of new life," an insight that would find expression in Walden. And James, following a period of panic and despair, experienced a redemptive conversion and new ideas that would drive his work as a psychologist and philosopher. As Richardson shows, all three emerged from their grief with a new way of seeing, one shaped by a belief in what Emerson called "the deep remedial force that underlies all facts." An inspiring book about resilience and the new growth and creativity that can stem from devastating loss, Three Roads Back is also an extraordinary account of the hidden wellsprings of American thought.

Trees were central to Henry David Thoreau's creativity as a writer, his work as a naturalist, his thought, and his inner life. His portraits of them were so perfect, it was as if he could see the sap flowing beneath their bark. When Thoreau wrote that the poet loves the pine tree as his own shadow in the air, he was speaking about himself. In short, he spoke their language. In this original book, Richard Higgins explores Thoreau's deep connections to trees: his keen perception of them, the joy they gave him, the poetry he saw in them, his philosophical view of them, and how they fed his soul. His lively essays show that trees were a thread connecting all parts of Thoreau's being-heart, mind, and spirit. Included are one hundred excerpts from Thoreau's writings about trees, paired with over sixty of the author's photographs. Thoreau's words are as vivid now as they were in 1890, when an English naturalist wrote that he was unusually able to "to preserve the flashing forest colors in unfading light." Thoreau and the Language of Trees shows that Thoreau, with uncanny foresight, believed trees were essential to the preservation of the world.

"Richardson's rich and extensive book on Ralph Waldo Emerson is a guide to the fire that burned always at the center of Emerson's life. . . . To read this book is to be touched on the shoulder by a thousand years of poetry and thought. . . . For those who would understand Emerson, it is unforgettable; it is essential."--Mary Oliver, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

"Emerson himself would surely have applauded Robert Richardson's monumental study, which treats the sage's thought not as a set of coldly reasoned propositions but as the continually shifting outcome of a struggle to surmount crisis and tragedy. In the process, Richardson has fashioned our most credible portrait of a vulnerable, driven, fully human Emerson."--Frederick Crews, author of "The Sins of the Father

"The best biography I have read in years. Mr. Richardson is just the splendid writer Emerson has long deserved, and he makes the story great-hearted, inclusive, intellectual, and inspiring. I was enthralled."--Edward Hoagland

"A superb work . . . that will quickly come to be regarded as the definitive biography of Emerson. . . . Richardson's greatest achievement is to restore for us the emotional and passionate element of Emerson's life and personality, and to make us understand how significant an element that was. . . . He brings a very complex and interesting man--not just a thinker--to life."--David M. Robinson, author of "Emerson and the Conduct of Life

"Scholars and general readers alike will return to this comprehensive and painstaking study for a long time to come."--Joel Porte, editor of "Emerson's Essays

"The most readable biography of Emerson ever written and also one of the best from ascholarly standpoint."--Lawrence Buell, Harvard University

"In this magnificent study Emerson stands before us not only as the embodiment of his 'American Scholar' but also as a human mind. Richardson's Emerson is one whom we want to reread, but, more important, also whom we want to know as a friend and mentor."--Philip F. Gura

Probably the moat unpredictable variable in the "Fog of War" next to leadership, is the command and control process, comprised of three components: organizations, process, and facilities. Organizations include the formulation of staffs by the commander to accomplish the mission. Incorporated in the organization of the staffs are the roles, responsibilities, and functions. Large Civil War armies like the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Tennessee required significant numbers of staff officers to support the armies logistically and to maneuver them operationally. During the Campaign and Battle of Chickamauga, these staff officers often played major roles and were instrumental in determining the outcome of the battle. The roles and functions performed by these staff officers evolved through the history of conflict. This study is an analysis of the roles, responsibilities, and functions of General Rosecrans' staff prior to and during the Chickamauga campaign, using lessons learned in comparison to current Army doctrine on command and control. Primary sources for staff information on the Army of the Cumberland are the Official Records and actual telegrams from the staffs during this period. Doctrinal manuals on senior level staffs did not exist; therefore, these staffs were composites of regimental and War Department staff positions and ad hoc positions. The study uses evolving doctrine from Command and General Staff College that defines an outstanding staff as one that informs, anticipates, coordinates and executes the commander's guidance with enthusiasm and innovation. This study concludes that Rosecrans' staff was significant to the outcome of the Battle of Chickamauga. Although none of the staff functions developed critical deficiencies during the campaign, their inability to relieve the commander of administrative burdens compelled him to abandon the battlefield.

The two years Thoreau spent at Walden Pond and the night he spent in the Concord jail are among the most familiar features of the American intellectual landscape. In this new biography, based on a reexamination of Thoreau's manuscripts and on a retracing of his trips, Robert Richardson offers a view of Thoreau's life and achievement in their full nineteenth century context.

..". peerless... " -- The Key Reporter

..". this bookis a first. It will be a standard... Comprehensiveness as well as the clarity of theheadnotes should make it endure." -- Choice

..". so good as itstands... one should simply be happy to have it." -- The Journal of the History ofIdeas

..". an original, compendious, and highly usefulcontribution to historical and mythographical scholarship." -- The AmericanScholar

"The Rise of Modern Mythology is a voice of reason in thecontemporary maelstrom of international religious violence and American pluralism;more than any book I know, it exposes the roots of the Western appropriation ofnon-Western mythologies, from Lawrence of Arabia and Omar Khayyam to TibetanBuddhism in Hollywood and Krishna Consciousness in airports. This is a book that weneed now." -- Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of theHistory of Religions, The University of Chicago

On the one hundredth anniversary of the death of William James, Robert Richardson, author of the magisterial William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism, assembles a wide-ranging selection of essays and writings that reveal the evolution of James's thought over time, especially as it was continually being shaped by the converging influences of psychology, philosophy, and religion throughout his life. Proceeding chronologically, the volume begins with "What Is an Emotion," James's early, notable, and still controversial argument that many of our emotions follow from (rather than cause) physical or physiological reactions. The book concludes with "The Moral Equivalent of War," one of the greatest anti-war pieces ever written, perhaps even more relevant now than when it was first published. In between, in essays on "The Dilemma of Determinism," "The Hidden Self," "Habit," and "The Will"; in chapters from The Principles of Psychology and The Varieties of Religious Experience; and in such pieces as "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," "What Makes a Life Significant," and "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results," we witness the evolution of James's philosophical thinking, his pragmatism, and his radical empiricism. Throughout, Richardson's deeply informed introductions place James's work in its proper biographical, historical, and philosophical context. In essay after essay, James calls us to live a fuller, richer, better life, to seek out and use our best energies and sympathies. As every day is the day of creation and judgment, so every age was once the new age-and as this book makes abundantly clear, William James's writings are still the gateway to many a new world.