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James Marcus's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books James Marcus recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of James Marcus's favorite book recommendations of all time.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was one of the seminal figures in American intellectual history, literature and culture. In his time he was the acknowledged leader of the Trascendentalist movement; his poetic legacy stretches from Walt Whitman to Allen Ginsberg; his educational ideals have been embraced by many; and his religious concepts greatly influenced the development of the Unitarian (later Unitarian Universalist) church. less
Recommended by James Marcus, and 1 others.

James MarcusI recommend it not because it’s a pinnacle of scholarship, but because Emerson is such an interior, cerebral personality that it’s great to see him from the outside—to have a kaleidoscopic view of many different people on the ground. This book records the recollections of many, some famous, and others who are completely obscure and just happened to cross paths with him. (Source)

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Emerson In His Journals

This long-awaited volume offers the general reader the heart of Emerson's journals, that extraordinary series of diaries and notebooks in which he poured out his thoughts for more than fifty years, beginning with the "luckless ragamuffin ideas" of his college days. Emerson as revealed in his journals is more spontaneous, more complex, more human and appealing than he appears in the published works. This man is the seeker rather than the sage; he records the turmoil, struggle, and questioning that preceded the serene and confident affirmations of the essays. He is honest, earthy, tough-minded,... more
Recommended by James Marcus, and 1 others.

James MarcusFor Emerson, keeping a journal functioned in many different ways. The journals were, first of all, a laboratory for all of his mature writing, a place where he would try out things. They were also a commonplace book. Last but not least, they were a window into an intimate side of Emerson that he would never, ever expose in his published writings. (Source)

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Emerson

The Mind on Fire

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...
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Recommended by James Marcus, and 1 others.

James MarcusI love Robert D Richardson’s book. His tone is warm, judicious, and empathetic, but not overly so. In a biography often laser-focused on Emerson’s intellectual development, the short chapters give you breathing room. (Source)

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Essays and Lectures

This first Library of America volume of Emerson’s writing covers the most productive period of his life, 1832–1860. Our most eloquent champion of individualism, Emerson acknowledges at the same time the countervailing pressures of society in American life. Even as he extols what he called “the great and crescive self,” he dramatizes and records its vicissitudes.

Here are the indispensable and most renowned works, including “The American Scholar” (“our intellectual Declaration of Independence,” as Oliver Wendell Holmes called it), “The Divinity School Address,” considered...
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Recommended by Tony Robbins, James Marcus, and 2 others.

James MarcusThis book includes all of Emerson’s work, basically. If you buy this, you have it all in the palm of your hand, starting with Nature and going on for another 1,250 pages or so. (Source)

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