{"product_id":"the-reason-for-the-darkness-of-the-night-edgar-allan-poe-and-the-forging-of-american-science-paperback","title":"The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eJohn Tresch\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFinalist for the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times \u003c\/i\u003eBook Prize Finalist for the 2022 Edgar Award\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2021 Quinn Award \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAn innovative biography of Edgar Allan Poe--highlighting his fascination and feuds with science. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDecade 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\"? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Reason for the Darkness of the Night\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTaking 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTracing Poe's hard and brilliant journey, \u003ci\u003eThe Reason for the Darkness of the Night \u003c\/i\u003eis 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.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Tresch\u003c\/b\u003e is Professor of History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice at the Warburg Institute in the University of London. He previously taught history of science and technology in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania for over a decade. He has held fellowships at the New York Public Library, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Romantic \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eMachine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 448\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.78 x 8.16 x 5.37 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 04, 2022\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51766933487904,"sku":"9781250849403","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/eb42fa83c5a3260f666d8d57a205e001.webp?v=1780301210","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/the-reason-for-the-darkness-of-the-night-edgar-allan-poe-and-the-forging-of-american-science-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}