-
Browse
- Browse All Books
-
Categories
- Biography & Autobiography
- Children
- Fiction
- Puzzles and Activity Sets
- Religion & Spirituality
- Young Adult Fiction
- shop all categories
-
Bestsellers
- Book Depot Bestsellers
- Nonfiction Bestsellers
- Fiction Bestsellers
- Picture Book Bestsellers
- Board Book Bestsellers
- shop all bestsellers
- Back-to-School
- Christmas
- Easter
- Father's Day
- Halloween
- Mother's Day
- St. Patrick's Day
- Thanksgiving & Entertaining
- Valentines
- Black Literature
- Canadiana
- Celebrity Book Club Picks
- Indigenous Literature
- Judaica
- Large Print
- STEM & STEAM Titles
-
Retailer/Bookseller
-
We offer the vast selection of titles, competitive prices, and fast processing times that you are looking for in a book supplier. Our large inventory of high-margin bargain books is up to 90% off the list price and easily browsable on our website —so you can stock the product your customers want, decrease your purchasing time, and improve your bottom line!
start browsing -
- Bestsellers
- Indie Bookstore Bestsellers
- Fiction Bestsellers
- Book Depot Bestsellers
- shop all bestsellers
- Testimonials
- Mosaic Books
- Powell's Books
- Black Bond Books
- view all testimonials
- Resources
- Knowledge Center
- Customer Service
-
-
Library/Educational
-
With our large selection of high-interest titles, we can help you stock your classroom, library, or reading programs with great books up to 90% off the list price! Our unbeatable prices, paired with an easy-to-use website and knowledgeable sales team, make us an invaluable resource to help you provide excellent reading experiences for all ages—all while keeping your budget firmly in check.
how we can help -
- Testimonials
- Salt Lake County Library Services
- Carnegie-Stout Public Library
- Manheim Township Public Library
- view all testimonials
- Resources
- Knowledge Center
- Customer Service
-
-
Nonprofit
-
When running a book program or giveaway on a limited budget, we understand the challenges you can face finding high quality, low-cost books. With our large selection of titles up to 90% off the list price, we can help stretch your budget further by getting more books into more hands for less!
start browsing -
- Bestsellers
- Nonprofit Bestsellers
- Children's Bestsellers
- Book Depot Bestsellers
- shop all bestsellers
- Resources
- Knowledge Center
- Customer Service
-
The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science
| Author: |
Tresch, John |
| Binding: |
Hardcover
|
| List Price: | $30.00 |
| Our Price: | $6.00 USD |
| Qty Avail: | 65 |
| ISBN: | 9780374247850 |
| Publisher: | Farrar Straus Giroux |
| Language: | English |
| Page Count: | 434 |
| Publication Date: | 6/15/2021 |
| Size: | 9.30" l x 6.26" w x 1.37" |
| Series: | N/A |
An innovative biography of Edgar Allan Poe - highlighting 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 Poe’s 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 era’s most prominent scientists, semi-scientists, and pseudo-intellectual rogues. As one newspaper put it, “Mr. Poe is not merely a man of science - not merely a poet - not 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 science - and 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 era’s scientific fraudsters even as he perpetrated hoaxes himself.
Tracing Poe’s 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 imagination - and an entertaining, erudite tour of the world of American science just as it was beginning to come into its own.
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 Poe’s 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 era’s most prominent scientists, semi-scientists, and pseudo-intellectual rogues. As one newspaper put it, “Mr. Poe is not merely a man of science - not merely a poet - not 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 science - and 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 era’s scientific fraudsters even as he perpetrated hoaxes himself.
Tracing Poe’s 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 imagination - and an entertaining, erudite tour of the world of American science just as it was beginning to come into its own.
