A Year with Emerson: A Daybook - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Paperback

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "a chief event of life is that day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us." A Year with Emerson is a feast of 365 such days, designed to celebrate the 200th birthday of the "Socrates of Concord." Philosopher, essayist, poet, and lecturer, Emerson (1803-1882) was the premier American intellectual of his era, known the world over as the very model of Man Thinking. Although he was a great preacher, he preached against every kind of dogma; although a great teacher, he urged teachers not to "teach" so much as to make learning possible. As Richard Grossman writes, "this avoidance of any formal system, this embrace of every contradiction, this deeply held belief in the never-ending undulation of nature and events" is what makes Emerson so deeply and timelessly American. "To dip into him frequently, almost at random," said Lewis Mumford, "is to find precisely the stimulus, or the counter-statement, or even the irritation that only he could give" - that is, the thought that inspires the reader to think for himself. Grossman organizes his selections from Emerson around the turning calendar, one entry for every day of the year. Many of the entries were written or spoken by Emerson on the date of the selection; others are characteristically Emersonian meditations on the day or the season. All are what Emerson calls "anecdotes of the intellect" that add up to "a sort of Farmer's Almanac of mental moods." The result is a book that the poet W. S. Merwin calls "a real treasury, a source of recurring discovery and a fine companion."Emerson, Ralph Waldo is the author of 'A Year with Emerson: A Daybook - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Paperback' with ISBN 9781567922981 and ISBN 1567922988.