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Figuring Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries—beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists—mostly women, mostly queer—whose public contribution have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson. Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman—and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.
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“It’s difficult to imagine a better narrator than Natascha McElhone…McElhone’s soft voice and poetic cadence guide listeners into the personal and professional lives of groundbreaking women…McElhone’s nonjudgmental, sensitive performance bolsters empathy for these brilliant women, and others like them, who bucked societal expectations with their careers and personal lives…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
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“Strange and lovely…fascinating…beautiful.”
— New York Times Book Review -
"Figuring is a love letter to scientists of the past, women whose lived have all too often been eclipsed.”
— Science -
“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.”
— Times Literary Supplement (London) -
“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.”
— Washington Post -
"[A] passionate and erudite pursuit of truth and beauty.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“This hidden gem of a work will enthrall readers seeking underrepresented voices in the history of science and literature.”
— Library Journal -
"[An] audacious new work of intellectual history that focuses on the lives of a coterie of brilliant women, some well-known and others less so, whose gifts in fields like astronomy, literature, ecology and art have helped shape our world.”
— BookPage
Awards
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A BookPage Top Pick of the Month in Social Science
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New York Times bestseller
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Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
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Shortlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
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Among shortlisted titles for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, 2020
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About Maria Popova
Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings, which is included in the Library of Congress’s permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials. She hosts The Universe in Verse, an annual celebration of science through poetry, at the interdisciplinary cultural center Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. She grew up in Bulgaria immersed in music and mathematics.
About Natascha McElhone
Natascha McElhone was born in London in 1971. She has starred in a wide range of TV, film and theatre including The Truman Show and Californication. She lives in London with her three boys.