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Loren Eiseley: Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos, Volume One

The Immense Journey | The Firmament of Time | The Unexpected Universe | uncollected prose More

Edited by William Cronon

“As captivating as today’s best-known science writers might be, no one has ever managed to make the pursuit of knowledge feel more soulful or more immediate than Loren Eiseley did in the essays and books he published in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.” —Ben Cosgrove, The Daily Beast

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week Loren Eiseley, “Barbed Wire and Brown Skulls”
September 5, 2017

Interviews William Cronon: The life, power, and magical prose of Loren Eiseley’s science and nature writing
December 14, 2016

Story of the Week Loren Eiseley, “The Fifth Planet”
December 1, 2016

Order both Loren Eiseley volumes in a boxed set and save $10!

To read Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) is to renew a sense of wonder at the miracles and paradoxes of evolution and the ever-changing diversity of life. At the height of a distinguished career as a “bone-hunter” and paleontologist, Eiseley turned from fieldwork and scientific publication to the personal essay in six remarkable books that are masterpieces of prose style. Weaving together anecdote, philosophical reflection, and keen observation with the soul and skill of a poet, Eiseley offers a brilliant, companionable introduction to the sciences, paving the way for writers like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Now for the first time, the Library of America presents his landmark essay collections in a definitive two-volume set.

Eiseley’s debut collection, The Immense Journey (1957), displays his far-reaching knowledge and boundless curiosity about the mysteries of the natural world. Here are vivid accounts of prehistoric ecosystems, the origins of consciousness, the search for “living fossils” at the bottom of the sea, and the complexities of our evolutionary inheritance. Here too are literary qualities and aspirations that led many to hail Eiseley as a “modern Thoreau”: his quest for the ultimate meanings and cosmological significance of natural phenomena, along with his immense expressive gifts.

The Firmament of Time (1960), a lyrical and meditative tour de force, looks back at the many ways in which the sciences have been shaped by the changing cultures in which they developed. Examining the role of metaphor in scientific thought, anticipations of scientific discoveries in the works of poets and novelists, and the “unconscious conformity” of scientific theory to prevailing orthodoxies, Eiseley argues provocatively for the ongoing relevance to scientific progress of dreams, the imagination, and the irrational.

In his wide-ranging collection The Unexpected Universe (1969), Eiseley turns to the theme of the voyage of discovery: accounts of the mythical and historic journeys of Odysseus, Captain Cook, and Darwin frame his own more modest wanderings in the environs of Philadelphia. Sometimes he travels no farther than the local dump: and yet, like Homer’s hero or these great explorers, he continually finds a universe “not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

As an added feature, this volume presents a selection of Eiseley’s uncollected prose, including early autobiographical sketches, vivid and haunting entries from his private notebooks, and his 1957 lecture “Neanderthal Man and the Dawn of Human Paleontology.”

William Cronon, editor, is America’s leading environmental historian. A winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, he is the author of Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983) and Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), and he currently serves as Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Project support for this volume was provided by The Gould Family Foundation.

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.
Table of Contents

The Immense Journey
The Slit
The Flow of the River
The Great Deeps
The Snout
How Flowers Changed the World
The Real Secret of Piltdown
The Maze
The Dream Animal
Man of the Future
Little Men and Flying Saucers
The Judgment of Birds
The Bird and the Machine
The Secret of Life

The Firmament of Time
How the World Became Natural
How Death Became Natural
How Life Became Natural
How Man Became Natural
How Human Is Man?
How Natural Is “Natural”?
Bibliography

The Unexpected Universe
The Ghost Continent
The Unexpected Universe
The Hidden Teacher
The Star Thrower
The Angry Winter
The Golden Alphabet
The Invisible Island
The Inner Galaxy
The Innocent Fox
The Last Neanderthal
Bibliography

Uncollected Prose
Autumn—A Memory
Riding the Peddlers
The Mop to K. C.
Neanderthal Man and the Dawn of Human Paleontology
Excerpts from_The Lost Notebooks_

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-506-8 500 pages

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