- Hardcover: 211 pages
- Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group; First Edition edition (27 Jan 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0307270785
- ISBN-13: 978-0307270788
- Product Dimensions: 15.2 x 2.3 x 24.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,099,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Angels and Ages
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Product Description
Review
‘Adam Gopnik has taken a coincidence and turned it into a theory of everything, or at least of everything important … Outstanding’ Andrew Marr.
‘Vivid and charming … Gopnik moves from the personal to the political with ease, and his writing hums with authenticity’ Financial Times.
'Gopnik knows well enough that Darwin and Lincoln's shared birth date is a mere accident of history, but he comes as close as anyone can in convincing you otherwise' New Scientist. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
‘Vivid and charming … Gopnik moves from the personal to the political with ease, and his writing hums with authenticity’ Financial Times.
'Gopnik knows well enough that Darwin and Lincoln's shared birth date is a mere accident of history, but he comes as close as anyone can in convincing you otherwise' New Scientist. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Product Description
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 and witnesses 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.
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 and witnesses 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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Essays on Lincoln and Darwin,
By
This review is from: Angels and Ages: A short book about Darwin, Lincoln and modern life (Paperback)
Adam Gopnik is a writer for the 'New Yorker' and has written this small book which contains dual biography of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln which he ties together because they were both born on 12 February 1809. In his two essays the author analyzes what he sees as their influence on modern society. He contends that these two men introduced what we know as the liberal modern age with Lincoln's speeches and Darwin's writings. That these were the men and vehicles used to spread the new ideas that formed modern society. As a dual historical biography he fails but as two separate essays they would be excellent for publication within the pages of the magazine he works for. Or if you are just looking for a casual introduction into these two men it would be worth acquiring and reading.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Darwin rather than Lincoln,
By
This review is from: Angels and Ages: A short book about Darwin, Lincoln and modern life (Paperback)
Interesting for much information that is new to the non-specialist, but a bit tedious for the constant stuff in brackets. I knew a lot more about Darwin, yet I found the Darwin chapters more convincing and 'sympathetic'. I would recommend the book, also because it is a pleasure to read something that is relatively brief, but with some reservations.
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Time and tide wait for no man ...,
By
This review is from: Angels and Ages: A short book about Darwin, Lincoln and modern life (Hardcover)
Time and tide wait for no man; some will show us how they (time, tide, or man) wait not.In his introductory chapter the author, Adam Gopnik, says "we are all pebbles dropped in the sea of history, where the splash strikes one way and the big tides run (the other way), and though what we feel is the splash, the splash takes place only within those tides. In almost every case, the (contra tide) drowns the splash; once in a while (a pebble splash) changes the way the (tide) runs." (My words and improvements in parentheses) At the time of this review (2009), it was exactly 200 years since two men were born on the same day. Both, in their relentless search and practice for the truth, changed the way we see the real world today. The one changed the way we see time and life, the other changed the way we see true leadership and freedom. Every learned person knows about Darwin. Most have heard of Abraham Lincoln. What few people know is that Abraham Lincoln also pitched his fearless leadership against the avaricious, corrupt banking plutocrats of Europe, England, and of the USA. The heartless plutocrats (who are still in existence today) arranged for his assassination. His leadership has in no way been nearly matched since. The Greenbacks of yore have since been replaced by the banking plutocrats' private-made-public debt money, and Americans have been paying for it bitterly in life and death ever since. The book is well worth reading for its prose, besides being read for its historical and philosophical content. The author's style of writing is well suited for the subject matter, as the discoveries have been given the poetic justice they deserve by the prose so beautifully penned in this book. The only negatives that give it 4 instead of 5 stars are the occasional over-embellished or badly thought-out prose. It is also a pity that there is no index in the book.
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