Christoph Irmscher
Author
Description
"Longfellow turns 200 in 2007, and the time has come to take another look at the most popular poet America has ever produced. Christoph Irmscher's new book dispenses with the modern prejudice against Longfellow as the mere purveyor of literary comfort food. By examining Longfellow's unpublished papers alongside letters written by his fans at home and abroad, Irmscher offers a view of the poet's intense connection with his audience. In chapters about...
Author
Description
"One hundred and seventy-five years ago, a Swiss immigrant took America by storm, launching American science as we know it. The irrepressible Louis Agassiz, legendary at a young age for his work on mountain glaciers, focused his prodigious energies on the fauna of the New World. Invited to deliver a series of lectures in Boston, he never left, becoming the most famous scientist of his time. A pioneer in field research and an obsessive collector, Agassiz...
Author
Description
"The Poetics of Natural History is about the daydreams of early American naturalists (from 1730 to 1868) and the collections they created around these dreams. Christoph Irmscher explores how, through the acts of organizing physical artifacts and reflecting upon their collections in writings and images, naturalists from John Bartram to Louis Agassiz were making sense of themselves and their world. These collections allowed them, in a way, to collect...