“A chief event of life is that day on which we have encountered a mind that startled us.” A Year with Emerson is a feast of 365 such days, designed to celebrate the bicentenary of the “Sage of Concord.” Known throughout the world for his cogent, epigrammatic writing, admired as the “George Washington of American Literature,” his work is even more piquant and enriching in bigger doses. In this delightful display of his genius, the daily almanac entries take us to the heart of his ideas and philosophy. Some were written on the very day in which they appear in the book, some are speculations and musings of the season and the natural world, but all are unfailingly wise, still relevant to our modern times.
As a philosopher, essayist, poet, and lecturer, Emerson’s mind ranged across the universe even as he traveled the length and breadth of the United States and Europe. With him as a companion and guide, we meet the ideas and personalities he championed and encountered, from Lincoln to John Muir, from Carlyle to Montaigne, and, of course, Emerson’s own close New England circle of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and the Alcotts. With company like this and the scope of Emerson’s vision, we can read the entries as a daily inspiration and tonic, or simply enjoy this extended daybook as a revelation of a visionary, incorruptible, and surprisingly modern mind.
Handsomely produced and brilliantly edited, A Year with Emerson is a feast for the active mind.
—Justin Kaplan
Vivid . . . vital . . . altogether fresh.
—Richard Howard