Best Biographies of Philosophers

Interweaving biography and philosophy, it is the epic account of passionate encounters--fights, love affairs, mentorships, rebellions, and long partnerships--and a vital investigation into what the existentialists have to offer us today, at a moment when we are once again confronting the major questions of freedom, global responsibility, and human authenticity in a fractious and technology-driven world. Bakewell is often annoyed but never defeated by Heidegger’s obscurity, and some of her most exciting pages are the engaged, unsimplifying accounts she offers of complex philosophies, even ones that finally repel her…One of many persuasive surprises in Bakewell’s book is her suggestion that Heidegger’s prose sometimes resembles Gertrude Stein’s in its deliberate linguistic strangeness, a resemblance that goes deeper than style…An unspoken theme of Bakewell’s book is the variety of ways in which academic philosophy can be distorted by power relations. Others, like Husserl and Heidegger, demanded obeisance… Bakewell has a special affection for philosophers who stayed free of the academy, especially Sartre and Beauvoir…Sarah Bakewell’s previous book was an engaging biography of Montaigne that was also a subtle exposition of Montaigne’s writings. Its audacious title was How to Live, and her new book deserves to be read as a further study in the same enlivening theme.” --The New York Times Book Review “ At the Existentialist Café is a bracingly fresh look at once-antiquated ideas and the milieu in which they flourished. Some may find the description of Camus as ‘a simple, cheerful soul,’ as surprising as Sartre’s apparently charming Donald Duck imitation… ‘When reading Sartre on freedom, Beauvoir on the subtle mechanisms of oppression, Kierkegaard on anxiety, Camus on rebellion, Heidegger on technology or Merleau-Ponty on cognitive science,’ Ms. Bakewell writes, ‘one sometimes feels one is reading the latest news.’” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times. "Bakewell brilliantly explains 20th-century existentialism through the extraordinary careers of the philosophers who devoted their lives and work to 'the task of responsible alertness' and 'questions of human identity, purpose, and freedom.'. “Bakewell follows her celebrated study of Montaigne…with a lively appraisal of existentialism and its leading thinkers…With coverage of friendship, travel, argument, tragedy, drugs, Paris, and, of course, lots of sex, Bakewell’s biographical approach pays off… The result is an engaging story about a group of passionate thinkers, and a reminder of their continued relevance.” —Booklist (starred review). “ At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails may come dressed in a seductive title, but Sarah Bakewell’s book about the people and ideas behind the existentialist movement is both breezy and brainy. Bakewell demonstrated her ability to plumb big ideas for real-life relevance in How to Live , her 2010 biography of Michel de Montaigne…She brings the same lively intelligence to her latest work. During the occupation, existentialists — who believed above all in freedom and responsibility — were engaged and committed to the Resistance in their actions and their literature… Among a panoply of riches, Bakewell offers fascinating anecdotes, including the heroics involved in saving Husserl’s papers during the war. But as Sarah Bakewell describes them in this vivid, vital group biography, existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvior, and Albert Camus were courageous free thinkers in an age of fascism, totalitarianism, and conformity.” —The Boston Globe. “Although biography provides the narrative momentum of At the Existentialist Café , much of the meat comes from the philosophy…Bakewell has a knack for crystallising key ideas by identifying choice original quotations and combining them with her own words…Perhaps the aphorism that best captures the book is one of Bakewell’s own: 'Thinking should be generous and have a good appetite.'. At the Existentialist Café , Sarah Bakewell’s group portrait of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir, and the other 'Continental' philosophers who flourished before and after World War II, is a work of deep intelligence and sympathy, reminding us how exciting those thinkers can be. Even if the context has shifted slightly, the question it asks remains just as relevant now as in the post-war years: what shall we make of a shattered world?” —The Brooklyn Rail "It's not often that you miss your bus stop because you're so engrossed in reading a book about existentialism, but I did exactly that while immersed in Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Café . Sarah Bakewell was a bookseller and a curator of early printed books at the Wellcome Library before publishing her highly acclaimed biographies The Smart, The English Dane , and the best-selling How to Live: A Life of Montaigne , which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.

Durant’s insight and wit never cease to dazzle; The Story of Philosophy is a key book for any reader who wishes to survey the history and development of philosophical ideas in the Western world. ''Easily the most engaging writer of Western intellectual history in the English language, Will Durant breathes life into philosophers and their ideas.

David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as “the Great Infidel” for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. Members of a vibrant intellectual scene in Enlightenment Scotland, Hume and Smith made many of the same friends (and enemies), joined the same clubs, and were interested in many of the same subjects well beyond philosophy and economics—from psychology and history to politics and Britain’s conflict with the American colonies. tells the story of Smith and Hume's bond, arguing convincingly and engagingly that there is ‘no higher example of a philosophical friendship in the entire Western tradition.’" --Ruth Scurr, Wall Street Journal. "In The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought , Dennis Rasmussen . "[Rasmussen] deftly examines not only Hume and Smith's personal relationship, but also the indispensable part that they played in shaping the Scottish Enlightenment. Pick up his book and you might find yourself agreeing with Hume that ‘reading and sauntering and lownging and dozing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness'." is a clearer, more exhaustive picture of the common ground that existed between the two thinkers, a map of the intersections, echoes and mirroring perspectives that connect their works. "This is a chatty account of the friendship between David Hume and the 12-years younger Adam Smith, discussing the extent to which Smith's thought was influenced by Hume (a lot, Rasmussen argues) and analysing the differences between them (he identifies four areas of disagreement: the nature of sympathy, the role of utility, the foundation of justice, and the effects of religion). "This engagingly written book tells the story of a remarkable friendship between two giants of eighteenth-century thought and heroes of the Scottish Enlightenment. Rasmussen is a historically and philosophically astute guide to the lives and ideas of Hume and Smith--as well as those of a large cast of supporting characters. --Steven Nadler, author of A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age. This cleverly constructed, learned yet eminently readable account uses their friendship to illuminate the ways in which their ideas converged and diverged. "In this impressive account of the close relationship between the two giants of the Scottish Enlightenment, Dennis Rasmussen brings out the full significance of the warm lifelong friendship and intellectual dialogue between David Hume and Adam Smith." Masterfully weaving together the historical evidence, Dennis Rasmussen does justice to both the ideas of these two men and their larger social and intellectual context. "This account of the friendship between two of the most important and famous thinkers of the eighteenth century―David Hume and Adam Smith―also provides an accessible introduction to their thought and writings."

A special 20th anniversary edition of the beloved international bestseller that changed millions of lives Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. An accidental viewing of an interview with Morrie on Nightline led Albom to become reunited with his old teacher, friend, and "coach" at a time when Albom, a successful sportswriter, was struggling to define dissatisfactions with his own life and career. Another reader might have interpreted the professor's aphorisms as droll humor or wrung a wrong note at an inappropriate moment, making the story a maudlin tearjerker; instead it is read for what it is, a tribute to a remarkable teacher.

Now an HBO® Film starring Oprah Winfrey and Rose Byrne #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010 : From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. Jad Abumrad is host and creator of the public radio hit Radiolab , now in its seventh season and reaching over a million people monthly. Just the simple facts are hard to believe: that in 1951, a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks dies of cervical cancer, but pieces of the tumor that killed her--taken without her knowledge or consent--live on, first in one lab, then in hundreds, then thousands, then in giant factories churning out polio vaccines, then aboard rocket ships launched into space. The cells from this one tumor would spawn a multi-billion dollar industry and become a foundation of modern science--leading to breakthroughs in gene mapping, cloning and fertility and helping to discover how viruses work and how cancer develops (among a million other things). But what's truly remarkable about Rebecca Skloot 's book is that we also get the rest of the story, the part that could have easily remained hidden had she not spent ten years unearthing it: Who was Henrietta Lacks? (1999)Main Street in downtown Clover, Virginia, where Henrietta was raised, circa 1930s.Margaret Gey and Minnie, a lab technician, in the Gey lab at Hopkins, circa 1951.Deborah with her children, LaTonya and Alfred, and her second husband, James Pullum, in the mid-1980s.In 2001, Deborah developed a severe case of hives after learning upsetting new information about her mother and sister.Deborah and her cousin Gary Lacks standing in front of drying tobacco, 2001.The Lacks family in 2009.

Now a major motion picture from Lionsgate starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, and Naomi Watts. MORE THAN SEVEN YEARS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST The perennially bestselling, extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, “nothing short of spectacular” ( Entertainment Weekly ) memoir from one of the world’s most gifted storytellers. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home. What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms. A regular contributor to MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor. But I have a very vivid memory of this tough, leathery woman; she sang, she danced, she shot guns, she’d play honky tonk piano. Half Broke Horses is a compilation of family stories, stitched together with gaps filled in. A: Several years ago, the abandoned building on New York’s Lower East Side where Mom had been squatting for more than a decade caught fire and she was back on the streets again at age 72. She doesn’t live in the house with us-- I have not reached that level of understanding and compassion-- but in an outbuilding about a hundred yards away. Mom is great with the animals, loves to sing and dance and ride horses, and is still painting like a fiend. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents—just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book—were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs and had "a little bit of a drinking situation," as her mother put it. With a fantastic storytelling knack, Walls describes her artist mom's great gift for rationalizing. While Walls's father's version of Christmas presents—walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star—was delightful, he wasn't so dear when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show.

#1 New York Times Bestseller |. Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • The Seattle Times • Esquire • Time Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction | Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction | Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award | Finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize | Finalist for the Kirkus Reviews Prize | An American Library Association Notable Book A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields.” —David Cole, The New York Review of Books “Searing, moving . Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful.” —Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review “Inspiring . Stevenson is not only a great lawyer, he’s also a gifted writer and storyteller.” — The Washington Post “As deeply moving, poignant and powerful a book as has been, and maybe ever can be, written about the death penalty.” —The Financial Times “Brilliant.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Not since Atticus Finch has a fearless and committed lawyer made such a difference in the American South. Just Mercy is his inspiring and powerful story.” —John Grisham “Bryan Stevenson is one of my personal heroes, perhaps the most inspiring and influential crusader for justice alive today, and Just Mercy is extraordinary. When Stevenson was a 23-year-old Harvard law student, he started an internship in Georgia where his first assignment was to deliver a message to a man living on death row. This is a title for the many young adults who have a parent or loved one in the prison system and the many others who are interested in social justice, the law, and the death penalty. [It] demonstrates, as powerfully as any book on criminal justice that I’ve ever read, the extent to which brutality, unfairness, and racial bias continue to infect criminal law in the United States. But at the same time that [Bryan] Stevenson tells an utterly damning story of deep-seated and widespread injustice, he also recounts instances of human compassion, understanding, mercy, and justice that offer hope. Just Mercy is a remarkable amalgam, at once a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields.” —David Cole, The New York Review of Books “A searing, moving and infuriating memoir . This book brings new life to the story by placing it in two affecting contexts: [Bryan] Stevenson’s life work and the deep strain of racial injustice in American life. Against tremendous odds, Stevenson has worked to free scores of people from wrongful or excessive punishment, arguing five times before the Supreme Court. Stevenson has been angry about [the criminal justice system] for years, and we are all the better for it.” —Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review “Inspiring . “As deeply moving, poignant and powerful a book as has been, and maybe ever can be, written about the death penalty.” —The Financial Times “Brilliant.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer. Bryan Stevenson, however, is very much alive and doing God’s work fighting for the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, the vulnerable, the outcast, and those with no hope. Just Mercy is his inspiring and powerful story.” —John Grisham “Bryan Stevenson is one of my personal heroes, perhaps the most inspiring and influential crusader for justice alive today, and Just Mercy is extraordinary. Bryan Stevenson is a real-life, modern-day Atticus Finch who, through his work in redeeming innocent people condemned to death, has sought to redeem the country itself. It is inspiring and suspenseful—a revelation.” —Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns “Words such as important and compelling may have lost their force through overuse, but reading this book will restore their meaning, along with one’s hopes for humanity.” —Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains “Bryan Stevenson is America’s young Nelson Mandela, a brilliant lawyer fighting with courage and conviction to guarantee justice for all. Just Mercy should be read by people of conscience in every civilized country in the world to discover what happens when revenge and retribution replace justice and mercy.

During his twenty-five year career with the Investigative Support Unit, Special Agent John Douglas became a legendary figure in law enforcement, pursuing some of the most notorious and sadistic serial killers of our time: the man who hunted prostitutes for sport in the woods of Alaska, the Atlanta child murderer, and Seattle's Green River killer, the case that nearly cost Douglas his life. Douglas, who developed criminal profiling techniques for the FBI, teams up with novelist Olshaker to tell of his 25-year career tracking down serial killers.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both. And part comes from the way he conveys what happened to him—passionately working and striving, deferring gratification, waiting to live, learning to die—so well.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times. The book brims with insightful reflections on mortality that are especially poignant coming from a trained physician familiar with what lies ahead.” — The Boston Globe. When Paul Kalanithi is given his diagnosis he is forced to see this disease, and the process of being sick, as a patient rather than a doctor--the result of his experience is not just a look at what living is and how it works from a scientific perspective, but the ins and outs of what makes life matter. As he wrote to a friend: ‘It’s just tragic enough and just imaginable enough.’ And just important enough to be unmissable.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Paul Kalanithi’s memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, written as he faced a terminal cancer diagnosis, is inherently sad. It is, despite its grim undertone, accidentally inspiring.” — The Washington Post “Paul Kalanithi’s posthumous memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, possesses the gravity and wisdom of an ancient Greek tragedy. [Kalanithi] is so likeable, so relatable, and so humble, that you become immersed in his world and forget where it’s all heading.” — USA Today “It’s [Kalanithi’s] unsentimental approach that makes When Breath Becomes Air so original—and so devastating. Its only fault is that the book, like his life, ends much too early.” — Entertainment Weekly “[ When Breath Becomes Air ] split my head open with its beauty.” —Cheryl Strayed. “Rattling, heartbreaking, and ultimately beautiful, the too-young Dr. Kalanithi’s memoir is proof that the dying are the ones who have the most to teach us about life.” —Atul Gawande “Thanks to When Breath Becomes Air, those of us who never met Paul Kalanithi will both mourn his death and benefit from his life. Kalanithi strives to define his dual role as physician and patient, and he weighs in on such topics as what makes life meaningful and how one determines what is most important when little time is left. This deeply moving memoir reveals how much can be achieved through service and gratitude when a life is courageously and resiliently lived.” — Publishers Weekly “A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity . Every doctor should read this book—written by a member of our own tribe, it helps us understand and overcome the barriers we all erect between ourselves and our patients as soon as we are out of medical school.” —Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery “A tremendous book, crackling with life, animated by wonder and by the question of how we should live.

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and board chairman Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands. Above all, he recalls the foundational relationships that formed the heart and soul of Nike, with his former track coach, the irascible and charismatic Bill Bowerman, and with his first employees, a ragtag group of misfits and savants who quickly became a band of swoosh-crazed brothers. It’s an amazing tale.”— Bill Gates, one of his favorite books of 2016 “ Shoe Dog is a great American story about luck, grit, know how, and the magic alchemy of a handful of eccentric characters who came together to build Nike. That it happened at all is a miracle, because as I learned from this book, though we are a nation that extols free enterprise, we also excel at thwarting it. I’ve worn the gear, with pride, but I didn’t realize the remarkable saga of innovation and survival and triumph that stood behind every swoosh. " Shoe Dog is an extraordinary hero's journey, an epic tale of faith, unparalleled determination, excellence, failure, triumph, hard earned wisdom, and love. Phil Knight takes us back to the Big Bang of the swoosh, recalls how he first begged and borrowed from reluctant banks, how he assembled a crew of eccentric but brilliant misfits, how they all worked together to build something unique and paradigm changing. "A fresh historical prospective on one of the most profiled companies in the world...[ Shoe Dog ] builds characters of the people behind the brand, many of whom we've never heard of." As Knight collects the misfits and oddballs who become the core of his growing company, Shoe Dog is more like The Lord of the Rings than a typical mogul memoir." As a business biography, it ranks with such recent works as Neal Gabler’s Disney and Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs . But as a personal memoir Shoe Dog reaches a depth of emotional honesty that even the best biographies haven’t touched." “A fascinating warts and all account of the company’s early years, a rascally tale of scrappiness and survival, a great read .

One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, The James Wright Award for Nature Writing, the. Costa Biography Award, the Royal Geographic Society's Ness Award, the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Kirkus Prize Prize for Nonfiction, the Independent Bookshop Week Book Award. A. Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist , Nature , Jezebel , Kirkus Reviews , Publishers Weekly , New Scientist , The Independent , The Telegraph , The Sunday Times, The Evening Standard, The Spectator Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. The Humboldt in these pages is bracingly contemporary; he acts and speaks in the way that a polyglot intellectual from the year 2015 might, were he transported two centuries into the past and set out to enlighten the world’s benighted scientists and political rulers. At times The Invention of Nature reads like pulp explorer fiction, a genre at least partially inspired by Humboldt’s own travelogues. Wulf makes Humboldtians of us all.”. —Nathaniel Rich, New York Review of Books “Alexander von Humboldt may have been the preeminent scientist of his era, second in fame only to Napoleon, but outside his native Germany his reputation has faded. Wulf does much to revive our appreciation of this ecological visionary through her lively, impressively researched account of his travels and exploits, reminding us of the lasting influence of his primary insight: that the Earth is a single, interconnected organism, one that can be catastrophically damaged by our own destructive actions.” —The New York Times Book Review , Top 10 Books of the Year. “Engrossing. Wulf magnificently recreates Humboldt’s dazzling, complex personality and the scope of his writing. Her book fulfills her aim to restore Humboldt to his place ‘in the pantheon of nature and science,’ revealing his approach as a key source for our modern understanding of the natural world.”. —Jenny Uglow, The Wall Street Journal “A magnificent work of resurrection, beautifully researched, elegantly written, a thrilling intellectual odyssey.”. —Christopher Hart, The Sunday Times (London). “The most complete portrait of one of the world’s most complete naturalists.”. —Mark Cocker, The Spectator (UK). “From Russia to the jungles of South America to the Himalayas, an intrepid explorer’s travels make for exhilarating reading. Argues, lyrically and compellingly, that the man who gave us ‘the concept of nature as we know it’ deserves not merely to be remembered, but to be celebrated once again.” —The Atlantic. Andrea Wulf makes an inspired case for Alexander von Humboldt to be considered the greatest scientist of the 19th century. With the immense challenge of grasping the global consequences of climate change, Humboldt’s interdisciplinary approach is more relevant than ever.”. — The Economist, Best Books of the Year. Yet it is also a fascinating history of ideas.”. —Sarah Darwin, Financial Times“ This book sets out to restore Humboldt to his rightful place in the pantheon of natural scientists. This meticulously researched work—part biography, part cabinet of curiosities—takes us on an exhilarating armchair voyage through some of the world’s least hospitable regions, from the steaming Amazon basin to the ice-fringed peaks of Kazakhstan.”. —Giles Milton, Mail on Sunday (London). readable, thoughtful, and widely researched, and informed by German sources richer than the English canon.”. —Colin Thubron, The New York Times Book Review , “Editor’s Choice”. “In its mission to rescue Humboldt’s reputation from the crevasse he and many other German writers and scientists fell into after the Second World War, it succeeds.”. —Joy lo Dico, The Independent (London). “Luminously written.”. —Roger Cox, The Scotsman (Edinburgh). “A dazzling account of Humboldt’s restless search for scientific, emotional and aesthetic satisfaction. Unapologetically in awe of her subject and intent on restoring Humboldt’s reputation, [Wulf] brings his ideas to the foreground—their emergence, spread and evolution after his death. With the environmental movement, ecology and climate science, Wulf argues, we may have entered another period in which connections predominate over isolated proofs, bringing renewed relevance to Humboldt’s grand visions of nature, the world and the universe.”. —Patrick Wilcken, Literary Review (UK). “Wulf, a historian with an invaluable environmental perspective, presents with zest and eloquence the full story of Humboldt’s adventurous life and extraordinary achievements. electrified fellow polymaths such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, discovered climate zones, and grasped the impact of industrialization on nature. In her coruscating account, historian Andrea Wulf reveals an indefatigable adept of close observation with a gift for the long view, as happy running a series of 4,000 experiments on the galvanic response as he was exploring brutal terrain in Latin America.”. —Barbara Kiser, Nature “Why is the man who predicted climate change forgotten? German-born Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World , has made it her mission to put a new shine on his reputation—and show why he still has much to teach us.”. —Simon Worrall, National Geographic “Gripping. Wulf has delved deep into her hero’s life and travelled widely to feel nature as he felt it. If The Invention of Nature reaches the wide readership it deserves, we can hope that situation will change.”. —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly “Wulf ( Chasing Venus ) makes an impassioned case for the reinstatement of the boundlessly energetic, perpetually curious, prolific polymath von Humboldt (1769–1859) as a key figure in the history of science. Wulf’s stories of wilderness adventure and academic exchange flow easily, and her affection for von Humboldt is contagious.”. — Publishers Weekly (starred review), Best Books of the Year. “Engrossing. Humboldt was the Einstein of the 19th century but far more widely read, and Wulf successfully combines a biography with an intoxicating history of his times.”. — Kirkus Reviews (starred review), Best Books of the Year. “Andrea Wulf is a writer of rare sensibilities and passionate fascinations. Her work is wonderful, her language sublime, her intelligence unflagging.”. —Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of The Signature of All Things and Big Magic “ The Invention of Nature is a big, magnificent, adventurous book—so vividly written and daringly researched—a geographical pilgrimage and an intellectual epic! The English-speaking world does, astonishingly, need such a reminder, and Andrea Wulf has told the tale with such brio, such understanding, such depth. And all around the subject is the world, gradually learning to be modern—sometimes it knew it was being taught by Humboldt, sometimes not, but there is hardly a branch of knowledge which he did not touch and influence. N. Wilson, author of The Victorians and Victoria: A Life “Andrea Wulf’s marvelous book should go a long way towards putting this captivating eighteenth century German scientist, traveler and opinion-shaper back at the heart of the way we look at the world which Humboldt helped to interpret, and whose environmental problems he predicted. She has captured the excitement and intimacy of his experiences within the pages of this irresistible and consistently absorbing life of a man whose discoveries have shaped the way we see.”. —Miranda Seymour, author of Noble Endeavors: A History of England and Germany. She appears regularly on radio and TV, and in 2014 copresented British Gardens in Time, a four-part series on BBC television.

He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath. This book brings droll wit to buoy this fascinating journey through 'the madness business.'".

But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency. But in war, Grant began to realize his remarkable potential, soaring through the ranks of the Union army, prevailing at the battle of Shiloh and in the Vicksburg campaign, and ultimately defeating the legendary Confederate general Robert E. Lee. More important, he sought freedom and justice for black Americans, working to crush the Ku Klux Klan and earning the admiration of Frederick Douglass, who called him “the vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of my race.” After his presidency, he was again brought low by a dashing young swindler on Wall Street, only to resuscitate his image by working with Mark Twain to publish his memoirs, which are recognized as a masterpiece of the genre. “This is a good time for Ron Chernow’s fine biography of Ulysses S. Grant to appear… As history, it is remarkable, full of fascinating details sure to make it interesting both to those with the most cursory knowledge of Grant’s life and to those who have read his memoirs or any of several previous biographies… For all its scholarly and literary strengths, this book’s greatest service is to remind us of Grant’s significant achievements at the end of the war and after, which have too long been overlooked and are too important today to be left in the dark… As Americans continue the struggle to defend justice and equality in our tumultuous and divisive era, we need to know what Grant did when our country’s very existence hung in the balance. Just as he did with George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, Chernow brings Ulysses S. Grant to life. Grant now lands in the middle, thanks to his extraordinarily progressive work on race relations….Ron Chernow’s 1,100-page biography may crown Grant’s restoration….Mr. Chernow argues persuasively that Grant has been badly misunderstood.”— The Economist “Chernow writes definitive biography of Ulysses S. Grant… [An] essential read… restores Grant to the pantheon of great Americans.”— Newsday “A landmark work….Chernow impressively examines Grant’s sensitivities and complexities and helps us to better understand an underappreciated man and underrated president who served his country extraordinarily well…. “Full of personal and professional insights into a president and military leader that readers will find simultaneously flawed, relatable, and inspiring.” — Money Magazine “Reading Ron Chernow's new biography, a truly mammoth examination of the life of Ulysses S. Grant, one is struck by the humanity - both the pitiful frailty and the incredible strength - of its subject.”— Philadelphia Inquirer. “Masterful and often poignant .… Chernow's gracefully written biography, which promises to be the definitive work on Grant for years to come, is fully equal to the man's remarkable story.”— Minneapolis Star Tribune “Reading this compelling book, it’s hard to imagine that we’ll continue to define Grant by these scandals rather than all he accomplished in winning the war and doing his best to make peace, on inclusive terms that would be fair to all.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Chernow’s biography is replete with fascinating details and insight­ful political analysis, a combination that brings Grant and his time to life….