
Emerson
The Mind on Fire
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Narrated by:
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Michael McConnohie
About this listen
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives us a rewarding intellectual biography that is also a portrait of the whole man.
These chapters present a young suitor, a grief-stricken widower, an affectionate father, and a man with an abiding genius for friendship.
The great spokesman for individualism and self-reliance turns out to have been a good neighbor, an activist citizen, a loyal brother. Here is an Emerson who knew how to laugh, who was self-doubting as well as self-reliant, and who became the greatest intellectual adventurer of his age.
Richardson has, as much as possible, let Emerson speak for himself through his published works, his many journals and notebooks, his letters, his reported conversations. This is not merely a study of Emerson's writing and his influence on others; it is Emerson's life as he experienced it. We see the failed minister, the struggling writer, the political reformer, the poetic liberator.
The Emerson of this book not only influenced Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost, he also inspired Nietzsche, William James, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Jorge Luis Borges. Emerson's timeliness is persistent and striking: his insistence that literature and science are not separate cultures, his emphasis on the worth of every individual, his respect for nature.
Richardson gives careful attention to the enormous range of Emerson's readings - from Persian poets to George Sand - and to his many friendships and personal encounters - from Mary Moody Emerson to the Cherokee chiefs in Boston - evoking both the man and the times in which he lived. Throughout this book, Emerson's unquenchable vitality reaches across the decades, and his hold on us endures.
©1995 Robert D. Richardson, Jr. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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There is only one Wright Thompson. He is, as they say, famous if you know who he is: his work includes the most-read articles in the history of ESPN (and it's not even close) and has been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series ten times, and he counts John Grisham and Richard Ford among his ardent admirers. But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive.
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Just great
- By ACK on 06-02-19
By: Wright Thompson
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First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process
- By: Robert D. Richardson
- Narrated by: Gary D. MacFadden
- Length: 2 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Writing was the central passion of Emerson's life. While his thoughts on the craft are well developed in "The Poet", "The American Scholar", Nature, "Goethe", and "Persian Poetry", less well known are the many pages in his private journals devoted to the relationship between writing and reading. Here, for the first time, is the Concord Sage's energetic, exuberant, and unconventional advice on the idea of writing, focused and distilled by the preeminent Emerson biographer at work today.
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A treat for any writer or Emerson fan
- By Ashley on 06-13-14
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The Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis
- By: Louis Markos, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Louis Markos
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Original Recording
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What can we still learn from C.S. Lewis? Find out in these 12 insightful lectures that cover the author's spiritual autobiography, novels, and his scholarly writings that reflect on pain and grief, love and friendship, prophecy and miracles, and education and mythology.
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Basically a collection of sermons
- By Richard on 11-20-13
By: Louis Markos, and others
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Henry David Thoreau
- A Life
- By: Laura Dassow Walls
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 22 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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"Walden. Yesterday I came here to live." That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thoreau in the American pantheon. His attempt to "live deliberately" in a small woods at the edge of his hometown of Concord has been a touchstone for individualists and seekers since the publication of Walden in 1854. But there was much more to Thoreau than his brief experiment in living at Walden Pond.
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Good book. Terrible narration.
- By deedee on 06-21-19
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Nature
- By: Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Narrated by: Richard Stibbard
- Length: 1 hr and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, narrated by Richard Stibbard, is a foundational work of transcendentalist philosophy that explores the profound connection between humanity and the natural world. In this timeless essay, Emerson encourages readers to look beyond the superficial and appreciate the deeper spiritual and philosophical lessons that nature offers. By finding unity and harmony with nature, Emerson suggests, individuals can achieve greater self-awareness, insight, and enlightenment.
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Phenomenology of Spirit
- By: G. W. F. Hegel, A. V. Miller - translator, J. N. Findlay
- Narrated by: David DeVries
- Length: 29 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Perhaps one of the most revolutionary works of philosophy ever presented, The Phenomenology of Spirit is Hegel's 1807 work that is in numerous ways extraordinary. A myriad of topics are discussed, and explained in such a harmoniously complex way that the method has been termed Hegelian dialectic. Ultimately, the work as a whole is a remarkable study of the mind's growth from its direct awareness to scientific philosophy, proving to be a difficult yet highly influential and enduring work.
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My favorite audible book of the 700 I've rated
- By Gary on 01-02-16
By: G. W. F. Hegel, and others
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Compensation
- By: Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Narrated by: Phil Paonessa
- Length: 1 hr and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Emerson's discourse on the laws of compensation, takes on the notion that one who has money must be wicked and those who do not must be good, among other topics. It appeared in his book Essays, first published in 1841.
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Compensation by Emerson
- By Plato on 06-08-21
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The Road to Character
- By: David Brooks
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, David Brooks
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Looking to some of the world's greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built a strong inner character. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint.
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Rich, textured stories
- By MarkM on 05-25-15
By: David Brooks
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Glad to the Brink of Fear
- A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson
- By: James Marcus
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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More than two centuries after his birth, Ralph Waldo Emerson remains one of the presiding spirits in American culture. Yet his reputation as the starry-eyed prophet of self-reliance has obscured a much more complicated figure who spent a lifetime wrestling with injustice, philosophy, art, desire, and suffering. James Marcus introduces listeners to this Emerson, a writer of self-interrogating genius whose visionary flights are always grounded in Yankee shrewdness.
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Excellent book and recording
- By James Strock on 04-10-24
By: James Marcus
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American Bloomsbury
- By: Susan Cheever
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is a fascinating biography of those who were, in the mid-19th century, at the center of American thought and literature. It was an eclectic cast of characters. At various times in Concord, Massachusetts, three houses were home to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry and John Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathanial Hawthorne. Among their friends and neighbors were Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, and others - men and women are at the heart of American idealism.
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Decent intro to 1840's Concord
- By Paula on 02-20-07
By: Susan Cheever
The author points out the wide range of people that Emerson influenced such as, Thoreau, Alcott, Dickerson, Fuller, Whitman, and Frost. He also inspired Nietzsche, William James, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf and Jorge Luis Borges.
Richardson did meticulous research for the book. The book is more or less easy to read but I felt there were too many repetitions and diversions that were unnecessary to the main point of the biography. I did enjoy learning more about Emerson. The book was 27 hours long and Michael McConnohie narrated the book.
The sage of Concord
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I really wanted to learn 'why do I know this name'. Sure I knew he was a famous writer, but sadly I knew nothing else. This was completely engaging! 26 hours and I have listened twice through already. Excellent work by the author and narrator.All I was looking for and more
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Great Book
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well worth the time
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As good as I expected
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Finally!
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A lot of material but hey it's Emerson
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Great but...
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just amazingly done
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The Mind on Fire
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