She wrote that his memory was failing "as to recent names and topics but as is usual in such cases all the mental impressions that were made when he was in full vigour remain clear and strong. As they chatted, lidian, in the next room, "What was the name of my best friend?""Henry Thoreau, Emerson called to his wife, " she answered.

Oh, yes, " Emerson repeated. Cramer beautifully illustrates the full nature of their twenty-five-year dialogue. A thoughtfully researched, movingly presented dual-biography of two iconic American writers, each trying to find the ideal friend with whom they could share their journey through our imperfect world.

Any biography that concentrates on either Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson tends to diminish the other figure, but in Solid Seasons both men remain central and equal. But the solid seasons remained, the english writer and friend of Whitman, as is evident when, in 1878, Anne Burrows Gilchrist, visited Emerson.

Through several decades of writing, friendship remained a primary theme for them both. Collecting extracts from the letters and journals of both men, as well as words written about them by their contemporaries, Jeffrey S. Henry Thoreau. ". Biographers like to point at the crisis in their friendship, focusing particularly on Thoreau's disappointment in Emerson—rarely on Emerson's own disappointment in Thoreau—and leaving it there, a friendship ruptured.

Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and The Bomb

Robert oppenheimer and the American Century, Einstein and Our World, and Uncertainty. Exhaustively detailed yet eminently readable, this is an important book. Publishers weekly, starred review"Cassidy does not so much exculpate Heisenberg as explain him, with a transparency that makes this biography a pleasure to read.

Los angeles Times"Well crafted and readable. Cassidy provides a nuanced and compelling account of Heisenberg's life. The harvard book reviewIn 1992, David C. Cassidy has sifted the record and brilliantly detailed Heisenberg’s actions. No book that has appeared since has rivaled Uncertainty, times, now out of print, for its depth and rich detail of the life, and science of this brilliant and controversial figure of twentieth-century physics.

Since the fall of the soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. Cassidy is the author of J. Michael frayn, in the playbill of the Broadway production of Copenhagen, referred to it as one of his main sources and “the standard work in English.

Richard rhodes the making of the atom bomb called it “the definitive biography of a great and tragic physicist, ” and the Los Angeles Times praised it as “an important book. In beyond uncertainty, cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist’s personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime.

Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature

Written in stone is the first book to tell the story of the fossils that mapped out evolutionary history. 150 years after darwin's origin was published, how feathered dinosaurs took to the air, scientists are beginning to understand how whales walked into the sea, how horses stood up on their tip-toes, and how our ancestors came down from the trees.

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The Poetic Species: A Conversation with Edward O. Wilson and Robert Hass

. Wilson, a biologist, naturalist, and bestselling author, has received more than 100 awards from around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize. He is a professor of English at University of California-Berkeley. He has been awarded the macarthur genius” Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award twice, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award.

A professor emeritus at Harvard University, he lives in Lexington, Massachusetts. Robert hass’ poetry is rooted in the landscapes of his native northern California. A testament to how science and the arts can join forces to educate and inspire, this book is also a passionate plea for conservation of all the planet’s species.

Edward O. Wilson, renowned scientist and proponent of consilience” or the unity of knowledge, finds an ardent interlocutor in Robert Hass, whose credo as United States poet laureate was imagination makes communities. As they explore the many ways that poetry and science enhance each other, they travel from anthills to ancient Egypt and to the heights and depths of human potential.

World literature Today Editor’s PickEnchanting. The poetic species is a wonderful read in its entirety, short yet infinitely simulating. Maria popova, brain pickingsin this shimmering conversation the outgrowth of an event co-sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and Poets House, Edward O.

The Quiet Crisis Rebel Reads

As Mr. Kennedy, clean water, from the introduction"Stewart Udall left an indelible mark on this nation and inspired countless Americans who will continue his fight for clean air, and to maintain our many natural treasures. President barack obamain his best-selling 1963 book, stewart Udall warned of the dangers of pollution and threats to America's natural resources, The Quiet Crisis, calling for a nationwide "land conscience" to conserve the nation's wild places.

Along with rachel carson's silent Spring, The Quiet Crisis is credited with triggering the modern environmental movement in America. The nation's battle to preserve the common estate is far from won. President John F. Udall's vivid narrative makes clear, the race between education and erosion, between wisdom and waste, has not run its course.

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A Wilder Time: Notes from a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice

Over numerous seasons, William E. Anchored by deep reflection and scientific knowledge, nearly untrammeled world that holds the secrets of our planet's deepest past, A Wilder Time is a portrait of an ancient, even as it accelerates into our rapidly changing future. He is the author of over seventy research articles and a textbook on geothermal energy.

As their research drove the scientists ever farther into regions barely explored by humans for millennia—if ever—Glassley encountered wondrous creatures and natural phenomena that gave him unexpected insight into the origins of myth, the virtues and boundaries of science, and the importance of seeking the wilderness within.

An invitation to experience a breathtaking place and the fascinating science behind its creation, A Wilder Time is nature writing at its best. William E. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. John burroughs medal for distinguished natural History Book WinnerNew Mexico-Arizona Book Award WinnerKirkus Reviews "Best Book of the Year" selection"A richly literary account.

. Glassley and two fellow geologists traveled there to collect samples and observe rock formations for evidence to prove a contested theory that plate tectonics, the movement of Earth's crust over its molten core, is a much more ancient process than some believed. Glassley is a geologist at the university of California, and an emeritus researcher at Aarhus University, Davis, Denmark, focusing on the evolution of continents and the processes that energize them.

The book bears the literary, scientific, philosophic, and poetic qualities of a nature-writing classic, the rarest mixture of beauty and scholarship, told with the deftest touch.

Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America

Soon a community that has long been suspicious of outsiders faces wrenching new questions about who is responsible for their fate, Griswold reveals what happens when an imperiled town faces a crisis of values, and for redressing it: The faceless corporations that are poisoning the land? The environmentalists who fail to see their economic distress? A federal government that is mandated to protect but fails on the job? Drawing on seven years of immersive reporting, and a family wagers everything on an improbable quest for justice.

Against local opposition, haney and her allies doggedly pursue their case in court and begin to expose the damage that’s being done to the land her family has lived on for centuries. Soon trucks begin rumbling past her small farm, a fenced-off drill site rises on an adjacent hilltop, and domestic animals and pets start to die.

When mysterious sicknesses begin to afflict her children, she appeals to the company for help. Its representatives insist that nothing is wrong. Alarmed by her children’s illnesses, Haney joins with neighbors and a committed husband-and-wife legal team to investigate what’s really in the water and air.

Winner of the 2019 pulitzer prize for general nonfictionin amity and prosperity, the prizewinning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold tells the story of the energy boom’s impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia and one woman’s transformation from a struggling single parent to an unlikely activist.

Stacey haney is a local nurse working hard to raise two kids and keep up her small farm when the fracking boom comes to her hometown of Amity, Pennsylvania. Intrigued by reports of lucrative natural gas leases in her neighbors’ mailboxes, she strikes a deal with a Texas-based energy company.

John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court

For better and for worse, he made the Supreme Court a pillar of American life. He would hold the post for 34 years still a record, expounding the Constitution he loved. Through three decades of dramatic cases involving businessmen, established the Supreme Court's right to rebuke Congress or the president, scoundrels, Marshall defended the federal government against unruly states, Native Americans, and slaves, and unleashed the power of American commerce.

The life of john marshall, Founding Father and America's premier chief justice. After he died, it could never be ignored again. In 1801, a genial and brilliant Revolutionary War veteran and politician became the fourth chief justice of the United States. In john marshall, award-winning biographer Richard Brookhiser vividly chronicles America's greatest judge and the world he made.

Before he joined the supreme Court, it was the weakling of the federal government, lacking in dignity and clout.

Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-four Books That Can Change Lives.

He read all the stories, slaughterhouse-five, plays, 1984, poems, brave new world, and novels that the kids were reading, and creates an impassioned portrait of charismatic teachers at work, Notes From Underground, including The Scarlet Letter, classroom dramas large and small, and fresh and inspiring encounters with the books themselves, Long Way Gone and many more.

Lit up is a dramatic narrative that traces awkward and baffled beginnings but also exciting breakthroughs and the emergence of pleasure in reading. Can teenagers be turned on to serious reading? what kind of teachers can do it, Denby sat in on a tenth-grade English class in a demanding New York public school for an entire academic year, and what books? To find out, and made frequent visits to a troubled inner-city public school in New Haven and to a respected public school in Westchester county.

This indifference has become a grievous loss to our standing as a great nation--and a personal loss, too, for millions of teenagers who may turn into adults with limited understanding of themselves and the world. A bestselling author and distinguished critic goes back to high school to find out whether books can shape livesIt's no secret that millions of American teenagers, movies, don't read seriously-they associate sustained reading with duty or work, television, and games, caught up in social media, not with pleasure.

In a sea of bad news about education and the fate of the book, Denby reaffirms the power of great teachers and the importance and inspiration of great books.

A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America

When franklin stepped onto French soil, he well understood he was embarking on the greatest gamble of his career. Here is an unfamiliar, unforgettable chapter of the Revolution, a rousing tale of American infighting, and the treacherous backroom dealings at Versailles that would propel George Washington from near decimation at Valley Forge to victory at Yorktown.

In this dazzling work of history, a pulitzer prize-winning author follows Benjamin Franklin to France for the crowning achievement of his careerIn December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France. So begins an enthralling narrative account of how Benjamin Franklin--seventy years old, and possessed of the most rudimentary French--convinced France, an absolute monarchy, without any diplomatic training, to underwrite America's experiment in democracy.

. By virtue of fame, charisma, franklin outmaneuvered British spies, and ingenuity, French informers, and hostile colleagues; engineered the Franco-American alliance of 1778; and helped to negotiate the peace of 1783. From these pages emerge a particularly human and yet fiercely determined Founding Father, improvisational, as well as a profound sense of how fragile, and international was our country's bid for independence.

The eight-year french mission stands not only as Franklin's most vital service to his country but as the most revealing of the man. In a great improvisation, stacy Schiff draws from new and little-known sources to illuminate the least-explored part of Franklin's life.

Shakespeare's Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature

Unfolding the search like the mystery that it is, acclaimed author Stuart Kells follows the trail of the hunters, taking us through different conceptions of the library and of the man himself. An engaging and provocative contribution to the unending world of Shakespeariana. It bears on fundamental principles of art, identity, history, meaning, and truth.

The search for shakespeare’s library is much more than a treasure hunt. Knowing what the bard read informs our reading of his work, and it offers insight into the mythos of Shakespeare and the debate around authorship. The library’s fate has profound implications for literature, for national and cultural identity, and for the global Shakespeare industry.

And yet a critical part of the puzzle, Shakespeare’s library, is a mystery. Entertaining and enlightening, Shakespeare’s Library is a captivating exploration of literature’s most enduring enigma. Yet no trace of the Bard’s manuscripts, books, or letters has ever been found. An enchanting work that bibliophiles will savor and Shakespeare fans adore.

Kirkus reviews millions of words of scholarship have been expended on the world’s most famous author and his work.