The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought - Softcover

Robinson, Marilynne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312425325 ISBN 13: 9780312425326

Publisher: Picador, 2005

Synopsis

In this award-winning collection, the bestselling author of Gilead offers us other ways of thinking about history, religion, and society. Whether rescuing "Calvinism" and its creator Jean Cauvin from the repressive "puritan" stereotype, or considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by Midwestern abolitionists, or the divide between the Bible and Darwinism, Marilynne Robinson repeatedly sends her reader back to the primary texts that are central to the development of American culture but little read or acknowledged today.

A passionate and provocative celebration of ideas, the old arts of civilization, and life's mystery, The Death of Adam is, in the words of Robert D. Richardson, Jr., "a grand, sweeping, blazing, brilliant, life-changing book."

About this title

About the Author:

Marilynne Robinson is the author of the modern classic Housekeeping--winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award--and two books of nonfiction, Mother Country (FSG, 1989) and The Death of Adam. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

"These essays were written for various uses and
occasions over a number of years. They have
characteristic preoccupations -- religion, history,
the state of contemporary society -- and they are, all
of them, contrarian in method and spirit. They assert,
in one way or another, that the prevailing view of
things can be assumed to be wrong, and that its
opposite, being its image or shadow, can also be
assumed to be wrong. They undertake to demonstrate
that there are other ways of thinking, for which
better arguments can be made." -- from the
Introduction

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0312425325
• ISBN 13: 9780312425326
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288