Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life [Hardcover]

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.

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.

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.

On 12th February 1809, two men were born an ocean apart: Charles Darwin on an English country estate; Abraham Lincoln in a Kentucky log cabin. They never met, but their great parallel lives would transform society and mankind's understanding of itself. In this bicentennial twin portrait, Adam Gopnik shows how Darwin and Lincoln influenced the way we think about death and time - about the very nature of existence. Darwin's theory of evolution opened up a dramatic new era of discovery where the planet's age could be measured not in thousands, but billions of years - definitively undermining theological notions of history. Lincoln unleashed a great tide of blood to uphold the Union and bring about the emancipation of America's slaves, developing a connection between freedom and sacrifice that reverberates down to this day. Angels and Ages shows how argument from reason informed their lives and actions, leading them to use language in a way that was as revolutionary as their ideas. What drove them to defend the truth in the face of public adversity? How did their inconsolable and common grief at the loss of a young and beloved child change them? Above all we see Darwin and Lincoln as thinkers and writers, as makers and witnesses of the great change that marks modern times: the slow emergence from a backward-looking culture of souls and morals to a forward-looking culture of eyes and minds, from an old civilization based on faith and fear to our modern civilization of observation and argument, and from a belief in the judgment of divinity to a belief in the verdicts of history and time. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

On February 12th, 1809, two men were born an ocean apart: Charles Darwin on an English country estate; Abraham Lincoln in a Kentucky log cabin. Their great parallel lives were to transform humanity's understanding of itself. Adam Gopnik takes the coincidence of their birth as the starting-point to explore these historical giants, showing how they informed their lives and actions based on argument from reason, in the process using language that was as revolutionary as their ideas. And, in the loss of their favoured child, they shared a private tragedy for which their philosophical views on death would prove little comfort. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Adam Gopnik is the author of Paris to the Moon and Through the Children's Gate and is a contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.