John Carlos Rowe takes a fascinating look at some of America's greatest literary minds and discusses their positions concerning the two major politcal movements of the 19th century: abolition and women's rights. Using Emerson as a starting point(hence the title), he details the writers' political comittment and efficacy.Authors discussed include Melville, Poe, Douglass, Whitman and Twain. This is a fascinating look at the writers, their times, and their politics.

Some quotations from Adam Starchild's wonderful afterword to this book are appropriate:

"Children today are starved for the image of real heroes. Celebrities are not the same thing as heroes. Heroes existed way before celebrities ever did, even though celebrities now outshine heroes in children's consciousness."

"Worshiping celebrities leaves children with a distinctly empty feeling -- it doesn't teach that they'll have to make sacrifices if they want to achieve anything worthwhile. No- talents become celebrities all the time. The result is that people don't seem to care about achievement or talent -- fame is the only objective."

"... Despite immense differences in cultures, heroes around the world generally share a number of traits that instruct and inspire people. A hero does something worth talking about, but a hero goes beyond mere fame or celebrity. The hero lives a life worthy of imitation. If they serve only their own fame, they may be celebrities but not heroes. Heroes are catalysts for change. They create new possibilities. They have a vision, and the skill and charm to implement their vision."

"Heroes may also be fictional. Children may identify with a character because of the values projected. People tend to grow to be like the people that they admire, but if a child never has any heroes what images will he copy? Adults need heroes too, but the need is even more urgent for children because they don't know how to think abstractly. But they can imagine what their hero would do in the circumstances, and it gives them a useful reference point to build abstract thinking skills."

This is a popular edition of Emerson, published, I think, at the tail end of the era when Emerson was a household name. The look of the book suggests that it was published for the convenience of those then-millions of people in mind who might not've read much Emerson but who believed they ought to. On about a third of the pages there is a box in the middle of the page, around which the text flows, in which an arresting excerpt from the text is printed in large italics.

I'd love to think that something like this book, skilfully marketed, would help put Emerson back on lots of bookshelves. It probably wouldn't, I know. Anyway, it's a reminder of a time when Wm. H. Wise, at least, still believed it was possible.

This is the best overview of the state of the literature on Emerson. It gracefully carries the reader from the initial evaluations of Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Santayana, and John Dewey, through the development of what had become the standard view represented by Matthiessen's American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941) and Stephen Whicher's Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1953) to the contemporary 'detranscendentalizing' movement that reads Emerson "after Nietzsche, after Wittgenstein" as Stanley Cavell puts it. The book aims in part to counter the mid-century views that stressed the moral idealism and 'naive' optimism that made some experience reading Emerson's Essays as akin to taking "happiness pills" (Kennith Burke).

Lopez continues a revaluation of Emerson's "demanding optimism" that had its first roots in Newton Arvin's compensatory essay "The House of Pain: Emerson and the Tragic Sense." (Hudson Review, Vol. XII, No. 1, Spring 1959) Lopez describes a "New Emerson," like the "New Nietzsche" that has emerged since Gilles Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962) Jacques Derrida's "Differance" (1968) "The Ends of Man" (1972) and Tracy Strong's Friederich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (1975).

Lopez's book is an excellent corrective to the conventional wisdom and what has nearly become the standard interpretation of Emerson, although Lopez argues forcefully that no reading of Emerson has established itself as the accepted standard view. Emerson is distinguished from other major American writers of his time such as Poe, Whitman and Melvill precisely on the lack of a consensus as to what his main writings mean. This is in part because scholars have been reluctant to take what Emerson says in his major published works at face value. The typical response to his 'hard sayings' is to attribute the hyperbolic style and his exuberance and enthusiasm. But Lopez shows more than that Emerson expresses ideas in line with the intellectual and philosophical milieux of the ninetieth century. He also shows that Emerson's ironies, aphorisms, peculiar voicing of claims and subtle forms of self-erasure warrant a view of his work as significantly more 'modern' or even 'post-modern' than has been allowed

Never before have I been so struck by a piece of writing. Rosenwald's writing style is magnificent . . . really drawing the reader into his arguments concerning Emerson. If you haven't read this book yet, you are not a true scholar.

Dr. Robinson is my professor here at Oregon State University in the English Dept., and I just admire him so much. I don't think that a better job could have been done with the works of Emerson. It is easy to read and understand; there are no tricks about it. I urge everyone who ever wanted to know more about Emerson to indulge themselves in this fine work by Dr. Robinson.

This book is amazing. Emerson has been noted as being the greatest American thinker of his time and it is no doubt as to why this is so. He has a wonderful mind and his words and ideas just flow so eloquently in his works. Emerson's philosophy has been "Do not seek answers outside yourself." It is all found within. The soul is one of the only absolute truths existing in this world. Emerson's belief in Transcendentalism further entertains ideas such as these. It's a wonderful book and it is exactly what our superficial world needs in order to put higher thinking and intuition above material desires.

of emerson's essays, im just going to point out that this book is very light weight, has very high durability, and is printed in a 'just right' size font... I know that these seem like little things, but you have to understand, once you read emerson's essays, you will want to re-read it, so light-ness and easy-to-readness are factors in your purchase and this version is very good for that.... I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this paperback version, for this price.

About the content... Well, this is the one and only book where I could honestly, say that I support everything and stand behind everything the author claims... My heart is completly in-line with his writings. Or rather, everything he said made sense, in a balls-to-bone sort of way. This book has essays that empowers you, sort of like Anthony robbins, but in a much more stronger way, because its not based on 'practical habits', or 'positive thinking', but an exploration on the incredibleness of the human soul, that are more than just thought provoking...They are inspiring, not in just an example-giving kind of way, or "you could be like this" sort of way... It is simply truth, as one man saw fit, in a most honest, clear, and literate way. Even Nietszche was in total awe of everything Emerson wrote, saying emerson's soul was basically something in the heavens.

Yes, transcendentalism is the label to his philosophies, but Emerson doesn't really write "philosophies", he simply writes (with mathmatical like precision), his ideas about man, that start without any prior knowledge or terms necessary to read it.. It is as clean and laser-like in his explanations, and it has the strength of a mathematical proof, and has the heart and sincerity that truly makes the soul of the reader come alive, even soar at times.

So don't buy them both (as I see some shoppers have done). Here's what I wrote in my review of the later edition:

Harold Bloom repeatedly names Ralph Waldo Emerson as the great theological architect of the "American religion" in his book of that title. However controversial some of Bloom's other theses may be, there is much truth in his characterization of the Sage of Concord. Probably most of us have been influenced by Emerson, at least indirectly, in far more ways than we realize.

But reading Emerson directly is at once an enlightening and maddening experience: "enlightening" because Emerson was a philosopher in the best sense of the word -- a lover of wisdom -- and "maddening" because he was _not_ a philosopher in any _other_ sense of the word. He was stubbornly disinclined to argumentation or even systematic exposition; his essays read more like sermons than like philosophical arguments; he preferred to deliver himself of his oracular insights without, it seems, subjecting them either to the criticism of other minds or even to the rigors of critical self-reflection, on the view that Reason was an all but infallible source of insight into truth and its objects are known with the same immediacy with which we know that we are awake. (It is a curious view of reason which makes no allowances for improvement of one's understanding.)

As a result of this take-it-or-leave it approach, his writings are all too easy to misunderstand, and for this he must bear much of the blame. For example, his remarks on charity in "Self-reliance" have led some readers to suppose that he was opposed to charity altogether, whereas in truth he believed that we are each of us suited by talent and temperament to be "charitable" to a special class of persons for whom we are therefore _truly_ responsible. Then, too, his remark in the same essay on "a foolish consistency" has been infamously and endlessly misquoted -- but even in its proper context it invites misunderstanding by failing to pay sufficient attention to the non-foolish variety of consistency (which Emerson supposed would take care of itself more or less automatically). Here again, Emerson's account of Reason, in giving so much weight to intuition, leaves strangely little room for reflection.

But in my own opinion, at least, Emerson's insights are genuine, sometimes brilliant, and essentially right, and it would be a shame if the readers who needed him most were unable to profit from his writings merely because he had been needlessly obscure. It would be nice, then, to have from another writer the guidance that Emerson himself was unwilling or unable to provide.

As you've probably guessed by now, that's where Richard Geldard comes in.

In this volume (which is a revised edition of _The Esoteric Emerson_, so don't buy them both!) Geldard does a marvelous job of exposition. He knows his Emerson backwards and forwards, and he sets out the essential features of Emerson's thought in clear and orderly fashion, chapter by chapter.

His essential "take" on Emerson, as you can tell from his title, is that Emerson is best approached as a spiritual teacher. I think this is not only correct but even obviously so; yet it is surprising how few available critical studies of Emerson are actually written from this point of view. At any rate, Geldard's exposition will provide the reader of Emerson with a much-needed "map" of the territory traversed in his writings.

I suspect that Geldard's "map" will make Emerson available to many readers who might otherwise have found him unpalatable. Some readers may, for example, be put off by what seems to be Emerson's extraordinarily cavalier attitude toward tradition in favor of present experience.

But according to Geldard, Emerson's actual meaning was as follows: "We have to break, lovingly, the vessels of our tradition in order to become one with the source of that tradition" [p. 176]. Now, certainly there is a difference in emphasis here with the religious tradition in which Emerson was brought up. But surely this is not far from, say, the Christian doctrine that the scriptures are a closed book unless read "in the Spirit." (Granted, Emerson had much more in common with the Quakers than with the Calvinists in what he made of this point. Nevertheless it is not alien to even the most theologically conservative Christianity.)

Not being a Christian myself, though, I am interested not primarily in reconciling Emerson with Christian theology but in simple exposition of his teaching. And Geldard excels in this regard: in ten straightforward chapters he sets out the essentials of Emerson's teaching and places it into the context of his life. Not bad for 177 pages of text.

There are one or two points on which I wish Geldard had done a _little_ bit more explaining (for example, on the difference between the meanings of "idealism" in its philosophical and its popular senses), since he does not seem to be presuming any prior acquaintance with philosophy on the part of his readers. But this is just nitpicking on my part. (Hey, I have my own favorite hobby horses too.) This is a fine book and it will be of immense value to anyone who wants to understand what in the world Emerson was on about.

This is one of the greatest books I have ever read. I know that many people don't like to read essays of any kind, but all I can say is that Ralph Waldo Emerson is simply different! Nobody has the gift to write essays and analyze life like him.

His words and ideas are so powerful and deep that we soon realize that they didn't come only from a brilliant mind, but also from a warm-hearted soul!

That's exactly what this book is about: Its sentences break through your brain and penetrate right into your soul! Emerson's optimistic view on human beings and life can only reinforce our courage in mankind and, especially, in ourselves!

What else can I say? His speech is direct, he defends all the good values, tell us to have confidence in ourselves and show us that passing through life with dignity is a matter of choice and courage, and that it simply doesn't change with time. It was like this a thousand years ago, it will probably follow the same rules a thousand years f! ! rom now.

This is the book I grab to comfort my spirit when I'm having difficult times... :) It is a guide that make us believe that anything is possible when we really want it! " Self-Reliance ", one of the essays inside this book, is a masterpiece in its own and I believe it should be studied in every high school, instead some of the crap we are usually obliged to read!

This book can shape your spirit and your mind. It is also possibly THE BEST self-help book you could ever own and, yet, a great literary work.

I would rate this book as ageless and I'm sure the future generations will be still interested in it, such as are we in those ancient Greek and Roman texts.

This is precious culture and food for your soul as a bargain! Do not waste more time. READ IT!!!