The reason for the darkness of the night : Edgar Allan Poe and the forging of American science
(Book)
Author
Published
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
Appears on list
Status
Central - Adult Nonfiction
818.309 TRESC
1 available
818.309 TRESC
1 available
Westover - Adult Nonfiction
818.309 TRESC
1 available
818.309 TRESC
1 available
Copies
Location | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Central - Adult Nonfiction | 818.309 TRESC | Available |
Westover - Adult Nonfiction | 818.309 TRESC | Available |
Description
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More Details
Published
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
Format
Book
Physical Desc
434 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language
English
Notes
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 351-409) and index.
Description
Decade after decade, Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the most popular American writers. He is beloved around the world for his pioneering detective fiction, tales of horror, and haunting, atmospheric verse. But what if there was another side to the man who wrote “The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”? In The Reason for the Darkness of the Night, John Tresch offers a bold new biography of a writer whose short, tortured life continues to fascinate. Shining a spotlight on an era when the lines separating entertainment, speculation, and scientific inquiry were blurred, Tresch reveals Poe’s obsession with science and lifelong ambition to advance and question human knowledge. Even as he composed dazzling works of fiction, he remained an avid and often combative commentator on new discoveries, publishing and hustling in literary scenes that also hosted the era’s most prominent scientists, semi-scientists, and pseudo-intellectual rogues. As one newspaper put it, “Mr. Poe is not merely a man of science―not merely a poet―not merely a man of letters. He is all combined; and perhaps he is something more.” Taking us through his early training in mathematics and engineering at West Point and the tumultuous years that followed, Tresch shows that Poe lived, thought, and suffered surrounded by science―and that many of his most renowned and imaginative works can best be understood in its company. He cast doubt on perceived certainties even as he hungered for knowledge, and at the end of his life delivered a mind-bending lecture on the origins of the universe that would win the admiration of twentieth-century physicists. Pursuing extraordinary conjectures and a unique aesthetic vision, he remained a figure of explosive contradiction: he gleefully exposed the hoaxes of the era’s scientific fraudsters even as he perpetrated hoaxes himself. Tracing Poe’s hard and brilliant journey, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night is an essential new portrait of a writer whose life is synonymous with mystery and imagination―and an entertaining, erudite tour of the world of American science just as it was beginning to come into its own. --from Amazon.
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Citations
APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)
Tresch, J. (2021). The reason for the darkness of the night: Edgar Allan Poe and the forging of American science (First edition.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)Tresch, John, 1972-. 2021. The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)Tresch, John, 1972-. The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)Tresch, John. The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science First edition., Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.
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