Figuring

ISBN-13: 9781786897268 / Angielski

Maria Popova

Opis

A history of women who have changed our understanding of the universe, from the creator of Brain Pickings

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 catalysed the environmental movement.Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists - mostly women, mostly queer - whose public contribution has 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.

Recenzje

A highly original survey of life, love and creativity; an intellectual odyssey that challenges easy categorisation . . . Popova writes beautifully, translating abstractions into sensuous, evocative subjects, turning history and science into symphonic prose poetry . . . To read Figuring is to be immersed in a gloriously ambitious symphony of ideas that segues effortlessly Guardian

O autorze

Maria Popova started Brain Pickings in 2006 as a weekly email that went out to seven friends and which she eventually brought online. The site was added to the Library of Congress permanent web archives in 2012. She has written for the Atlantic, New York Times and Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab.