Ralph Waldo Emerson, a noted abolitionist, poet and philosopher who helped launched the American romantic and transcendentalist movements, once offered this advice: “Be an opener of doors to those who ...

In later chapters, Marcus sensitively attends to Emerson’s cynical posture (and eventual about-face) on the subject of the abolition of slavery. And when Emerson grieves for his son Waldo, who ...

Charles Sumner is best known as the statesman caned within an inch of his life on the Senate floor for speaking against the expansion of slavery.  Sumner counted among his friends Ralph Waldo Emerson, ...

Emerson so decisively articulated the necessary “soul revolution” that 175 years later, it’s as if he’d foreseen the no exit from neoliberal totality, except via alive imagination.

THE LETTERS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON—Columbia University Press—6 vols. ($30).The best letters are brief, direct, factual. The best letter writers are usually women and soldiers, who ...

Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson James Marcus. Princeton Univ, $29.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-691-25433-3 ...

James Marcus had long been fascinated by Ralph Waldo Emerson, but it wasn’t until he found himself at a low point, both professionally and personally, that he began to see the great ...