"The Universe In Verse" by Maria Popova.
Magical Earth + Magical Science + Mighty Poetry
= ABSOLUTE AWESOMENESS!
Book Me In, Please! ππππ€©
The Universe in Verse
is an ode to wonder and an exploration
of the human search for truth and meaning.
Poetry and science, as Maria Popova writes in her introduction,
"are instruments for knowing the world more
intimately and loving it more deeply."
In 15 short essays on subjects ranging from the mystery of dark matter and the infinity of pi to the resilience of trees and the intelligence of octopuses, Popova tells the stories of scientific searching and discovery.
These stories are interwoven with details from the very real and human lives of scientists—many of them women, many underrecognized—and poets inspired by the same questions and the beauty they reveal.
Each essay is paired with a poem reflecting its subject by poets ranging from Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Maya Angelou, Diane Ackerman, and Tracy K. Smith, and is stunningly illustrated by celebrated artist Ofra Amit.
Together, they wake us to a
"reality aglow with wonder."
“This book is a wonder. Science writing so often negates the inherent wonder of science, which comes so brilliantly alive here. Something bursts open in the mind. And let me say this: Maria Popova has the rare gift of starting a sentence and leaving you in trance by its end. I'd read anything she writes.”
—Jad Abumrad,
creator, Radiolab
About the author:
Maria Popova thinks and writes about our search for meaning—sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children's books, always through the lens of wonder.
She is the creator of The Marginalian, born in 2006 under the outgrown name Brain Pickings and included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials, author of Figuring and The Snail with the Right Heart, and maker of The Universe in Verse—a charitable celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry.
"Seven years after the improbable idea of cross-pollinating poetry and science came abloom on a Brooklyn stage in a former warehouse built in Whitman’s lifetime, after it traveled to the redwoods of Santa Cruz and the sunlit skies of Austin, The Universe in Verse has become a book
— fifteen portals to wonder, each comprising an essay about some enchanting facet of science (entropy and dark matter, symmetry and the singularity, octopus intelligence and the evolution of flowers), paired with a poem that shines a sidewise gleam on these concepts (Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, Maya Angelou and Sylvia Plath, Tracy K. Smith and Marie Howe).
It was a joy to write, and a joy to collaborate with two of the most thoughtful and talented people I know: The print book features original art by Ofra Amit (who painted my favorite piece in A Velocity of Being), and the audiobook features my favorite voice in the universe — the magnificent Lili Taylor."
by Maria Popova @Marginalian
Pre order Signed Copies @ McNally Jackson
Independent Booksellers NYC
