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Figuring Hardcover – February 5, 2019
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Additional Details
- Print length592 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPantheon
- Publication dateFebruary 5, 2019
- Dimensions6.47 x 1.53 x 9.55 inches
- ISBN-101524748137
- ISBN-13978-1524748135
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Intimate . . . timely . . . Figuring thunders along with a novelistic intensity, propelled by the organic drama of its extraordinary lives . . . It speaks to the quality of Popova’s own writing that it survives comparison with the literary giants of the last four centuries. Her wonderfully deft and sincere prose melts down the raw materials of heavy research into a coruscating flow of ideas, images, and insights that add skin and sinew to the bones of biographical fact to create a forward-looking history that's both timely and timeless.” —Vanity Fair
“Strange and lovely . . . [An] ambitious, challenging and somewhat category-defying book . . . fascinating . . . beautiful.” —The New York Times Book Review
“An intricate tapestry in which the lives of these women, and dozens of other scientific and literary figures, are woven together through threads of connection across four centuries . . . In Figuring, we are thrust into a waltz of exquisitely honed minds—most of them belonging to women, many of them sexually queer—all insisting on living to their fullest.” —The Washington Post
“Poignant . . . dynamic and engaging . . . Figuring, if anything, serves as a corrective to the male/straight school of historical writing, showcasing women who tried to live their own lives and create their own worlds in the face of dismissal and neglect. Finally, perhaps, women like Fuller, Mitchell, and Carson have found their best chronicler.”—Book and Film Globe
"Figuringis a love letter to scientists of the past, women whose lived have all too often been eclipsed. . . striking. . . profound. . . dizzying in its scope. . . inspirational. . . There is grandeur and beauty in this view of science. . . few have so fulsomely explored how science and poetry, love and learning, and affairs of the heart intertwine in a way that, even after more than 500 pages, leaves one trembling for more. But like other affairs of the heart, the joys of reading Popova’s prose are perhaps best experienced for oneself.” —Science!
“Stunning in both its scope and execution. . . [Figuring] is a shiningly femme, revolutionary, and poetic piece of literature. . .”—The Harvard Crimson
“Fans of polymath Maria Popova’s popular website, Brain Pickings, will find themselves right at home in Figuring, her audacious new work of intellectual history that focuses on the lives of a coterie of brilliant women. . . Figuring invites the reader to engage with complex ideas and challenging personalities, unearthing a wealth of material for further reflection along the way.” —BookPage (starred review)
“Fascinating . . . Piecing together human truths and the remarkable details of these lives well-lived into an extraordinary mosaic of human existence, Figuring reveals our timeless interconnectedness, and the inevitable, although improbable, intersections of our lives in the vastness of the universe.” —BookTrib
“This is an ocean-deep and sky-uplifting book, an elaborate feast for both brain and soul. Written by the beyond brilliant Popova, it explores colossal questions through the interwoven lives of historical figures across centuries and disciplines including science, literature and art. There are galaxies of themes in the cosmos of Figuring—it’s a literary masterpiece like nothing else—but most of all, it’s a book on love, on meaning, on beauty, and on being.”—Yana Buhrer Tavanier, TED.com
“[With] the immediacy of eyewitness accounts . . . Popova has an uncanny ability to spot what connects a wide range of notable figures from different disciplines across four centuries . . . lyrical and imaginative . . . Figuring is itself a vivid demonstration of how one book feeds into another, and ideas ripple outwards across continents for hundreds of years, setting off a chain reaction of new discoveries . . .”—The Times Literary Supplement
“A musical, poetic modern classic . . . especially fine and fresh . . . Among the most compelling biographical pages I have ever read, rendering me incapable of closing the book.” —The Irish Times
“The polymathic Popova, presiding genius behind brainpickings.org, looks at some of the forgotten heroes of science, art, and culture . . . she peppers thoughtful, lucid consideration of acts of the imagination with stories that, if ever aired before, are too little known . . . Throughout her complex, consistently stimulating narrative, the author blends biography, cultural criticism, and journalism to forge elegant connections: Dickinson feeds onto Carson, who looks back to Mitchell, who looks forward to Popova herself, and with plenty of milestones along the way . . . A lyrical work of intellectual history, one that Popova's many followers will await eagerly and that deserves to win her many more.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A masterful weave of astronomy, social justice and human consciousness. It also contains age-old lessons for storytellers whose job is to bring new ideas to wide audiences.”—Thrive Global
“A work of alchemy . . . In her hands, biography becomes liquid gold . . . Figuring is a dense and intricate read, but Popova’s writing is clear and simple, designed to draw people in. She doesn’t obfuscate for the sake of it. The complexity is earned, even necessary for the tapestry she’s creating . . . it’s full of wonder, emotion and love . . .” —The Michigan Daily
“There is no one in American letters quite like Maria Popova . . . Through page after page of prose, I accompanied Maria Popova and her cast of characters until the larger picture came into focus. Looking into these lives was an invitation to look into my own, which seemed exactly Popova’s point. Those for whom deep reading and existential questioning are more pleasure than hardship will find this book good company.” —The Charleston Post and Courier
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
All of it—the rings of Saturn and my father’s wedding band, the underbelly of the clouds pinked by the rising sun, Einstein’s brain bathing in a jar of formaldehyde, every grain of sand that made the glass that made the jar and each idea Einstein ever had, the shepherdess singing in the Rila mountains of my native Bulgaria and each one of her sheep, every hair on Chance’s velveteen dog ears and Marianne Moore’s red braid and the whiskers of Montaigne’s cat, every translucent fingernail on my friend Amanda’s newborn son, every stone with which Virginia Woolf filled her coat pockets before wading into the River Ouse to drown, every copper atom composing the disc that carried arias aboard the first human-made object to enter interstellar space and every oak splinter of the floorboards onto which Beethoven collapsed in the fit of fury that cost him his hearing, the wetness of every tear that has ever been wept over a grave and the yellow of the beak of every raven that has ever watched the weepers, every cell in Galileo’s fleshy finger and every molecule of gas and dust that made the moons of Jupiter to which it pointed, the Dipper of freckles constellating the olive firmament of a certain forearm I love and every axonal flutter of the tenderness with which I love her, all the facts and figments by which we are perpetually figuring and reconfiguring reality—it all banged into being 13.8 billion years ago from a single source, no louder than the opening note of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, no larger than the dot levitating over the small i, the I lowered from the pedestal of ego.
How can we know this and still succumb to the illusion of separateness, of otherness? This veneer must have been what the confluence of accidents and atoms known as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., saw through when he spoke of our “inescapable network of mutuality,” what Walt Whitman punctured when he wrote that “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
One autumn morning, as I read a dead poet’s letters in my friend Wendy’s backyard in San Francisco, I glimpse a fragment of that atomic mutuality. Midsentence, my peripheral vision—that glory of instinct honed by millennia of evolution—pulls me toward a miraculous sight: a small, shimmering red leaf twirling in midair. It seems for a moment to be dancing its final descent. But no—it remains suspended there, six feet above ground, orbiting an invisible center by an invisible force. For an instant I can see how such imperceptible causalities could drive the human mind to superstition, could impel medieval villagers to seek explanation in magic and witchcraft. But then I step closer and notice a fine spider’s web glistening in the air above the leaf, conspiring with gravity in this spinning miracle.
Neither the spider has planned for the leaf nor the leaf for the spider—and yet there they are, an accidental pendulum propelled by the same forces that cradle the moons of Jupiter in orbit, animated into this ephemeral early-morning splendor by eternal cosmic laws impervious to beauty and indifferent to meaning, yet replete with both to the bewildered human consciousness beholding it.
We spend our lives trying to discern where we end and the rest of the world begins. We snatch our freeze-frame of life from the simultaneity of existence by holding on to illusions of permanence, congruence, and linearity; of static selves and lives that unfold in sensical narratives. All the while, we mistake chance for choice, our labels and models of things for the things themselves, our records for our history. History is not what happened, but what survives the shipwrecks of judgment and chance.
Some truths, like beauty, are best illuminated by the sidewise gleam of figuring, of meaning-making. In the course of our figuring, orbits intersect, often unbeknownst to the bodies they carry—intersections mappable only from the distance of decades or centuries. Facts crosshatch with other facts to shade in the nuances of a larger truth—not relativism, no, but the mightiest realism we have. We slice through the simultaneity by being everything at once: our first names and our last names, our loneliness and our society, our bold ambition and our blind hope, our unrequited and part-requited loves. Lives are lived in parallel and perpendicular, fathomed nonlinearly, figured not in the straight graphs of “biography” but in many-sided, many-splendored diagrams. Lives interweave with other lives, and out of the tapestry arise hints at answers to questions that raze to the bone of life: What are the building blocks of character, of contentment, of lasting achievement? How does a person come into self-possession and sovereignty of mind against the tide of convention and unreasoning collectivism? Does genius suffice for happiness, does distinction, does love? Two Nobel Prizes don’t seem to recompense the melancholy radiating from every photograph of the woman in the black laboratory dress. Is success a guarantee of fulfillment, or merely a promise as precarious as a marital vow? How, in this blink of existence bookended by nothingness, do we attain completeness of being?
There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.
So much of the beauty, so much of what propels our pursuit of truth, stems from the invisible connections—between ideas, between disciplines, between the denizens of a particular time and a particular place, between the interior world of each pioneer and the mark they leave on the cave walls of culture, between faint figures who pass each other in the nocturne before the torchlight of a revolution lights the new day, with little more than a half-nod of kinship and a match to change hands.
Product details
- Publisher : Pantheon; First Edition (February 5, 2019)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 592 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1524748137
- ISBN-13 : 978-1524748135
- Item Weight : 1.63 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.47 x 1.53 x 9.55 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #237,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #290 in LGBTQ+ Biographies (Books)
- #657 in Women in History
- #2,709 in Women's Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org), which is included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials. She is the creator and host of The Universe in Verse—an annual charitable celebration of science and the natural world through poetry.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book engaging, lyrical, and graciously offered. They also describe the content as fascinating, helping them see their lives more clearly. Readers praise the writing style as insightful, lively, informal, and easy to read.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the writing style insightful, lively, informal, and engaging. They also say the book is well-written, interesting, and covers literary greats. Readers also mention that the author is lucid, eloquent, and soulful.
"...Written from a perspective that is insightful, lively, informal, and engaging!" Read more
"...Well, yes, I am a slow reader, but also, this book is SO rich, it deserves to be savored. I've underlined at least half of it...." Read more
"...And the theme of beauty is within Maria Popova’s gorgeous writing...." Read more
"...The book also covers literary greats and Popova shows how these individuals are part of communities that support and sometimes thwart their efforts...." Read more
Customers find the book engaging, inspiring, and whimsical. They also say the people feel very alive and real. Readers also mention the book is wonderful and graciously offered.
"...Written from a perspective that is insightful, lively, informal, and engaging!" Read more
"...The people feel very alive and real -- as if they were alive today, but also as if I had time-travelled back and could eaves-drop and witness the..." Read more
"...Very gorgeous, inspiring, and a sense that every word is infused with profound respect and love for her subjects and for the ideas...." Read more
"...It is a song of joy to achievers, in particular to women who were great scholars and scientists and not been as well recognized as they should have..." Read more
Customers find the book fascinating, entertaining, and informative. They also say it's a masterpiece with many interesting lives intersecting and influencing each other. Readers also say the book has opened their eyes to the impact of women they'd not heard of.
"Fascinating melding of history of science, philosophy, and struggle of women to achieve success in science...." Read more
"...They astonish me. Second of all there's so much history of scientific discovery and discoverers (and so many of them women!!)..." Read more
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"Very interesting, informative and well written book. History in a great book. I recommend it." Read more
Customers find the book worth the price.
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"The first sentence alone is worth the price of this beautiful work of art. I read it over and over, and then typed it up and sent it to a friend...." Read more
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Written from a perspective that is insightful, lively, informal, and engaging!
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From the opening sentence — a page-long masterpiece of cosmic and personal images — I knew that I would be transformed by these pages. Popova reaches out into the eternal depths of the universe, and finds there abundant refractions of the fleeting depths of the human soul.
Popova juxtaposes the lives of her subjects in a way that is at times disorienting. There is order here, but it is not the imposed order of human thought. It is rather the order of nature: her stories grow forward through time while also reaching out in tangled vines and loops, revealing the influences and connections — the fractal echoes — that we might ignore in our more traditional addictions to straight lines and oversimplified causes and effects.
If there is a rainbowing motif here, it is the motif of connection — of the way that each moment is a constellation of points of light, how every self is a tree planted deep within the soil of the past, both cosmic and individual.
From inspiration to genius to grief, Popova reveals the beauty inherent in humanity’s striving for meaning.
Her sentences are often layered poems in themselves. She writes: “In lives like Emily Dickinson’s — lives of tessellated emotional complexity encrypted in a private lexicon, throbbing with intensity bloodlet in symbol and metaphor — the inevitable blind spots of biography become eclipses.” That sentence is a miniature model of the book as a whole: It is a self-aware exploration of the inner lives of people, filtered through the lenses of language and stars.
On death, Popova gives us magnificent clarity: “On a planet orbiting one of the two hundred billion stars in [the galaxy], a thinking, feeling creature was facing the fate of all matter — the atoms that had given it life were about to retreat into stardust.” From Kepler to Dickenson to Carson, Popova guides us to see them as passionate souls, but also as atoms briefly coalescing in time and space to move the human spirit forward.
Toward the end of the book, Popova presents an excerpt from a letter from Rachel Carson to her soulmate, Dorothy Freeman, in which Carson reflects on writing The Edge of the Sea:
“If I’m satisfied with this [writing] now, it’s at least partly due to an evening of Beethoven last night. Some little bits of his marvellous creativeness seems to seep through into my brain cells when I listen to him.”
I might say the same about Popova herself. Reading her, with her branches of interconnected stories, and her sensitive and melodious phrases, elevates our minds so that we become able to transmute the ordinary moments of life into notes in the eternal symphony. This is a book to read in the way we listen to Beethoven, or savour a sunset. It will awe you. It will inspire you. It will give you a new perspective from which to peer at the web of human achievement — and at the meaning of your own fragile time as a conscious constellation of stardust.
It’s clear to see that this book is a labour of love. Just to conceptualize this would have taken so much effort, I can’t even fathom what it took to bring this to fruition. But I’m so glad Maria did it. I have never read anything like this before. A compliment that was directed to Rachel Carson must also be used for Maria – “Books like yours are not written to order; they grow on the writer”.