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The Reason for the Darkness of the Night
The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science | John Tresch
An innovative biography of Edgar Allan Poehighlighting his fascination and feuds with science. Decade after decade, Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the most popular American writers. He is beloved around the world for his pioneering detective fiction, tales of horror, and haunting, atmospheric verse. But what if there was another side to the man who wrote The Raven and The Fall of the House of Usher? In The Reason for the Darkness of the Night, John Tresch offers a bold new biography of a writer whose short, tortured life continues to fascinate. Shining a spotlight on an era when the lines separating entertainment, speculation, and scientific inquiry were blurred, Tresch reveals Poes obsession with science and lifelong ambition to advance and question human knowledge. Even as he composed dazzling works of fiction, he remained an avid and often combative commentator on new discoveries, publishing and hustling in literary scenes that also hosted the eras most prominent scientists, semi-scientists, and pseudo-intellectual rogues. As one newspaper put it, Mr. Poe is not merely a man of sciencenot merely a poetnot merely a man of letters. He is all combined; and perhaps he is something more. Taking us through his early training in mathematics and engineering at West Point and the tumultuous years that followed, Tresch shows that Poe lived, thought, and suffered surrounded by scienceand that many of his most renowned and imaginative works can best be understood in its company. He cast doubt on perceived certainties even as he hungered for knowledge, and at the end of his life delivered a mind-bending lecture on the origins of the universe that would win the admiration of twentieth-century physicists. Pursuing extraordinary conjectures and a unique aesthetic vision, he remained a figure of explosive contradiction: he gleefully exposed the hoaxes of the eras scientific fraudsters even as he perpetrated hoaxes himself. Tracing Poes hard and brilliant journey, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night is an essential new portrait of a writer whose life is synonymous with mystery and imaginationand an entertaining, erudite tour of the world of American science just as it was beginning to come into its own.
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Found at the school #library

@Megara have you seen this Poe book?

Megara I have NOT SEEN THIS. And now it cannot be UNSEEN. It will be MINE! 2y
TheBookDream @Megara 😂 I just started it. Loving the author‘s writing style. Did not know Poe was an orphan! 2y
Megara Yeah! And as we‘ve learned from the musical—Hamilton to Aaron Burr: “You‘re an orphan! Of course! I wish there were a war so we can show everyone that we‘re worth more than anyone bargained for.” 2y
Megara Where‘d you find it? 2y
TheBookDream @Megara School library 2y
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