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33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Two giants become human, February 5, 2009
This interesting, scholarly book looks at the parallel lives of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, both born on the same February day in 1809. It's a fascinating glimpse at what life was like for these two men, and how they both changed history. After their deaths, a new liberal voice emerges: "the change from soul to mind as the engine of existence, and then from angels to ages as the overseers of life." What makes Angels and Ages so compelling, for me, is the way these two men are made human. I now can see the flesh-and-blood husbands, fathers, sons and working men behind the icons. A portrait of Lincoln as a shrewd, clear-eyed politician emerges. Famously born in a Kentucky log cabin, Lincoln wrote that his father Thomas wrote his own name "bunglingly." After his marriage to Mary Todd, Lincoln stands on his front porch, "a tall man with enough money to build a big house and be proud of it." Spoiling his kids, Lincoln "held their hands as they danced him down the street." In Darwin, a timid doting father peeks out from these pages, a person who loved to look at things and wrestle with his kids. He delayed a full 21 years before publishing "his great idea, the idea of evolution by natural selection. He was afraid of being attacked by the powerful and the bigoted." Darwin was also haunted by the fact that his findings would "end any intellectually credible idea of divine creation," and his beloved wife Emma used religion for comfort after the death of their favorite child, 10-year-old Anna. Author Adam Gopnik is fond of using poetic turns of phrase and long sentences. For example, he writes this about reading Darwin's On the Origin of the Species: "It's a Victorian hallucinogen, where the whole world suddenly comes alive and begins moving, so that the likeness between seagulls and sandpipers on the beach where you are reading suddenly becomes spookily animated, part of a single restless whole, with the birds' giant lizard ancestors looming like ghosts above them." It's evocative, but you might need to slow down your reading to catch all his meaning. Here's the chapter list: Introduction: Angels and Ages 1. Lincoln's Mind 2. Darwin's Eye 3. Lincoln in History 4. Darwin in Time Conclusion: Ages and Angels
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31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Double Bill, February 3, 2009
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born 12 February 1809. That was the most direct coincidence of the two lives; that they became great and famous men was secondary. The coincidence of their birthdays somehow inspired two books each written as a short, dual-biography of the two men. The first (published in 2008) was David Contosta's "Rebel Giants", subtitled, "The Revolutionary Lives of Abraham Lincoln & Charles Darwin". The second (published in 2009) was Adam Gopnik's "Angels and Ages". Gopnik's book is short (204 pages) and considering that it covered two men (with Darwin getting more page space) it really was a very short biographical work. However, since this is the 200th anniversary of their birth, curiosity might tempt many to read a little about Lincoln and Darwin. "Angels and Ages" will satisfy most people who have little or no knowledge about these men. Like "Rebel Giants" the reader will not read much about direct comparisons between the two lives, as indeed, both led in different directions on two different continents. There is a third book, "Darwin's Sacred Causes" written by two well known Darwin biographers Adrian Desmond & James Moore) which made a more scholarly attempt to show how the idea and practice of slavery (as opposed to an account comparing the lives of Darwin and Lincoln ) had a great humanitarian influence on Darwin's thoughts and attitude. On the whole, while "Angels and Ages" is a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening book, one might feel that the author was rushing, and there were moments when one might need to read over carefully because too many ideas were introduced and when that happens in a short book, the inevitable result is that the connections linking one idea to the next may sometimes be faulty or absent. Gopnik's comment about Darwin's literary style is one example. He made a fascinating point that Darwin's effectiveness was not in his use of the metaphor but in his avoidance of it. This would have benefitted from a deeper study but was soon lost between two pages. In contrast, "Rebel Giants" (330 pages) was written in a more measured pace. It also has the benefit of an index which Angels and Ages does not. It is a difficult choice but if you have time, read both but otherwise, I would recommend "Rebel Giants" to be the slightly more rewarding of the two.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brief, But Elegant And Profound, February 19, 2009
It is rare for a book of about 200 pages to contain much insight, but Adam Gopnik has done so, and managed to do it with an elegance of wit and language that would do credit to either of his subjects. Angels and Ages is a dual biography of two men born on the same February day in 1809: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Although born in very different circumstance, one in comfort and the other in dire poverty, both became major world changers and shifters. Both were accomplished wordsmiths, able to frame complicated ideas in beautiful, clear language. Both were devoted family men who suffered the loss of beloved children and endured difficult relationships with their spouses. Most of all, both were revolutionaries, able in one case to enunciate a clear doctrine of liberty and equality through law and in the other to set forth a new vision of how life began and developed. There are many more parallels than these in the lives of Darwin and Lincoln, and Gopnik does an excellent job describing and summarizing them. He does so in language that is as beautiful as anything either of his subjects could produce. I especially appreciated his Bibliographical Note at the end, in which he encapsulates most of the recent scholarship on the two men. While by no means a complete biography of either Lincoln or Darwin, Angels and Ages does capture the most important essence of both men, and provides its readers with much to ponder.
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