The Death of Adam
In the tradition of nineteenth-century novelists who turned to the essay, Marilynne Robinson offers an authoritative approach to refining the ideas our culture has handed down to us. Whether considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by midwestern abolitionists; how creationism, "long owned by the Religious Right," has spurred on contemporary Darwinism; or how John Calvin, who was a Frenchman in Geneva, points to America's continental origins, Robinson writes with great conviction.
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What Hacker News says
- I really enjoyed Marilynne Robinson's "Death of Adam: essays on modern thought". It's a pretty wide-ranging indictment of the "glib and dismissive" nature of a lot of modern thought. It won't help you rebuild a world view, but it will help point out the flaws in existing ones.
- Worth at least a quick browse in the bookstore: the essay "The Puritan and the Prig" in Marilynne Robinson's The Death of Adam.
- I read, and as Daniel noted above, I tend to read several at a time. Generally, I read philosophy and theology (my undergraduate degree is in philosophy), though most recently I've been picking up some of the collections of essays my wife is reading for her graduate work. I'm also a huge fan of anything about the history of Pittsburgh.
Current reading list: Christianity and Anarchy Jacques Ellul The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Third Ways Allan Carlson
My reading time seems to come in fits. Some days I won't pick up a book, and others I'll read for several hours. As for my favorites:
The Town and the City Jack Kerouac The Death of Adam Marilynne Robinson The Presence of the Kingdom Jacques Ellul
