Houghton Mifflin
Price: $30.00
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ROBERT D. RICHARDSON discusses William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
Harvard Book Store is pleased to announce that on Wednesday November 29th, Robert D. Richardson will discuss his new biography William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism.
The prize-winning biographer Robert D. Richardson has written a masterly and utterly moving portrait of James-- a pivotal member of the Metaphysical Club, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, and eldest sibling in the singular James family.
William James, ten years in the making, draws on a vast number of unpublished letters, journals, and family records. Richardson paints extraordinary scenes from what James himself called the "buzzing blooming confusion" of his life, beginning with childhood, as he struggled to achieve amid the domestic chaos and intellectual brilliance of Father, brother Henry, and sister Alice. Through impassioned scholarship, Richardson illuminates James's hugely influential works: the Varieties, Principles of Psychology, Talks to Teachers, and Pragmatism. James was a beloved teacher who taught courage and risk-taking, and served as mentor to W.E.B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein, and many other Harvard outsiders. One of the great figures in mysticism, James coined the phrase 'stream of consciousness.' Brought richly to life through Richardson's brilliant insights, James is a man "whose leading ideas are still so fresh and challenging that they are not yet fully assimilated by the modern world they helped to bring about."
*Starred Review* ""All that the human heart wants,' declared William James, 'is its chance.' In a biography of exceptional insight, Richardson recounts how James seized his historic chance to establish American psychology as a scientific pursuit freed from metaphysical encumbrance. Scholars and general readers alike will value the lucid narrative revealing how James erased the traditional boundary between thought and thinker, defying both Platonic idealism and materialistic determinism as he probed the powers of the human will to shape the universe it experiences.... A landmark study, certain to endure." -Booklist
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Robert D. Richardson, Jr., is author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, which won the Melcher Prize in 1987, and of Emerson: Mind on Fire, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
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