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Three Roads Back
How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their LivesBy Robert D. RichardsonNarrated by William Hope
Length2h 34m
About this audiobook
This audiobook narrated by William Hope examines how Emerson, Thoreau, and William James forged resilience from devastating loss and changed the course of American thought
In
Three Roads Back, Robert Richardson, the author of magisterial biographies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James, tells the connected stories of how these foundational American writers and thinkers dealt with personal tragedies early in their careers. For Emerson, it was the death of his young wife and, eleven years later, his five-year-old son; for Thoreau, it was the death of his brother; and for James, it was the death of his beloved cousin Minnie Temple. Filled with rich biographical detail and unforgettable passages from the journals and letters of Emerson, Thoreau, and James, these vivid and moving stories of loss and hard-fought resilience show how the writers' responses to these deaths helped spur them on to their greatest work, influencing the birth and course of American literature and philosophy.
In reaction to his traumatic loss, Emerson lost his Unitarian faith and found solace in nature. Thoreau, too, leaned on nature and its regenerative power, discovering that "death is the law of new life," an insight that would find expression in
Walden. And James, following a period of panic and despair, experienced a redemptive conversion and new ideas that would drive his work as a psychologist and philosopher. As Richardson shows, all three emerged from their grief with a new way of seeing, one shaped by a belief in what Emerson called "the deep remedial force that underlies all facts."
An inspiring book about resilience and the new growth and creativity that can stem from devastating loss,
Three Roads Back is also an extraordinary account of the hidden wellsprings of American thought.
Audiobook details
GenreLiterary Classics, Biography and Memoir
Length2 hrs 34 mins
Narrated byWilliam Hope
FormatAudiobook
Publish dateJan 24, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Opening Anno, Foreword
12Chapter 10 - Death Is the Law of New Life
2Preface
13Chapter 11 - My Friend Is My Real Brother
3Part 1 Emerson, Chapter 1, Building His Own World
14Chapter 12 - Emerson Commissions a Book Review
4Chapter 2 - I Will Be a Naturalist
15Chapter 13 - Our Own Limits Transgressed
5Chapter 3 - The Gallantry of the Private Heart
16Part 3 William James, Chapter 14, The Death of Minny Temple
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapter 4 - The Green World
17Chapter 15 - Minny and Henry
7Chapter 5 - Regeneration Through Nature
18Chapter 16 - Minny and William
8Part 2 Thoreau, Chapter 6, The Cup that My Father Gives Me
19Chapter 17 - From Panic and Despair to the Acceptance of Free Will
9Chapter 7 - I Had Hoped to Be Spared This
20Chapter 18 - The Self-Governing Resistance of the Ego to the World
10Chapter 8 - On Every Side Is Depth Unfathomable
21Postscript, Closing Anno
11Chapter 9 - Only Nature Has a Right to Grieve Perpetually
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