Traversal / Maria Popova.
| Author/creator | Popova, Maria |
| Format | Book |
| Edition | First edition. |
| Publication | New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026. |
| Copyright Date | ©2026 |
| Description | x, 590 pages ; 24 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Contents | A note on names -- (prelude) -- space takes the time it takes -- to make a planet a world -- by a plurality of purpose -- a trigonometry of truth -- time takes the space it takes -- to make a body a being -- by the seam of chance and choice -- you have to make a hole to make a stitch -- and meanwhile all this chemistry -- a shortness of breath -- a chemistry of longing -- longing that creates -- longing that consumes -- longing that destroys -- the sacred geometry of life -- to com pose in the interlude of being -- an interlude in blue -- in the cobalt cathedral of life -- unmasoning the catacomb of being -- on the grand stage of ego -- beneath the nimbus of nonbeing -- beyond the body -- to coalesce a self -- to make a being -- of atoms and alms -- of windswept longing -- an alchemy of ardors -- crossing the divide -- into a totality of being -- beyond the sum of belief -- between the glass plates of time -- between starshine and clay -- one hand holding tight the other -- to become a self -- another interlude in blue -- singing of the fathomless -- in the silence of the heart -- particle and wave -- nothing static -- at the bottom of being -- something choiceless stirs -- the pattern of the world -- nothing universal -- the ghost in the violin -- between body and spirit -- the story of the world -- where everything connects -- everything shimmers -- only the lucky die -- Bibliography -- Index. |
| Abstract | "In Traversal, Maria Popova illuminates our various instruments of reckoning with the bewilderment of being alive--our telescopes and our treatises, our postulates and our poems--through the intertwined lives, loves, and legacies of visionaries both celebrated and sidelined by history, people born into the margins of their time and place who lived to write the future: Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Fanny Wright, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Marie Tharp, Alfred Wegener, Humphry Davy, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead. Woven throughout their stories are other threads--the first global scientific collaboration, the Irish potato famine, the decoding of the insulin molecule, the invention of the bicycle, how nature creates blue--to make the tapestry of meaning more elaborate yet clearer as the book advances, converging on the ultimate question of what makes life alive and worth living. By turns epic and intimate--as concerned with the physical laws binding atoms into molecules as with the psychic forces binding us to one other--Traversal explores the universe between cells and souls to reveal the world, and our lives, in a dazzling new light.."-- Amazon. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages [569]-572) and index. |
| Genre/form | Biographies. |
| Genre/form | Biographies. |
| Genre/form | Biographies. |
| ISBN | 0374616418 (hardback) |
| ISBN | 9780374616410 (hardback) |
| Standard identifier# | CIPO000331584 |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joyner | New Books | CT104 .P76 2026 | ✔ Available | Want This? |