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‘Adam Gopnik has taken a coincidence and turned it into a theory of everything, or at least of everything important … Outstanding’ – Andrew Marr
On February 12th, 1809, two men were born an ocean apart: Abraham Lincoln in a one-room Kentucky log cabin; Charles Darwin on an English country estate. Each would see his life’s work transform mankind’s understanding of itself. In this bicentennial twin portrait, Adam Gopnik shows how these two giants, who never met, changed the way we think about the very nature of existence, and that their great achievements proceeded from the same source: argument from reason. The revolutions they effected shaped the world we live in, while the intellectual heritage and method that informed their parallel lives has profound implications for our present age.
Filled with little-known stories and unfamiliar characters, Angels and Ages reveals these men in a new, shared light, and provides a fascinating insight into the origins of our modern vision and liberal values.
On February 12th, 1809, two men were born an ocean apart: Abraham Lincoln in a one-room Kentucky log cabin; Charles Darwin on an English country estate. Each would see his life’s work transform mankind’s understanding of itself. In this bicentennial twin portrait, Adam Gopnik shows how these two giants, who never met, changed the way we think about the very nature of existence, and that their great achievements proceeded from the same source: argument from reason. The revolutions they effected shaped the world we live in, while the intellectual heritage and method that informed their parallel lives has profound implications for our present age.
Filled with little-known stories and unfamiliar characters, Angels and Ages reveals these men in a new, shared light, and provides a fascinating insight into the origins of our modern vision and liberal values.
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Reviews
'Adam Gopnik has taken a coincidence and turned it into a theory of everything, or at least of everything important ... Outstanding'
'Vivid and charming ... Gopnik moves from the personal to the political with ease, and his writing hums with authenticity'
'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'
'Adam Gopnik is a great essayist, with a precise, fastidious, if occasionally mannered style.... His insights are good and the book is informed by the author's profound liberalism'
'This is the essay every essayist would like to have written...he teases, returns again, holds back punchlines and concludes dense paragraphs with intense little summary bombs... The core of the book, the chemical conversion of coincidence to idea, is the proposition that Darwin and Lincoln both entered a world in which people understood themselves vertically - God above, Hell below...outstanding essay'