The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought

4.09 of 5 stars 4.09 · rating details · 464 ratings · 69 reviews

In this award-winning collection, the bestselling author of Gilead offers us other ways of thinking about history, religion, and society. Whether rescuing "Calvinism" and its creator Jean Cauvin from the repressive "puritan" stereotype, or considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by Midwestern abolitionists, or the divide between the Bible and Darwinism, Marilynn...more

Paperback, 263 pages

Published November 1st 2005 by Picador (first published 2000)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman

The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate

Best Book of Essays

12th out of 53 books — 48 voters

Samuel Johnson is Indignant by Lydia Davis

2013 Man Booker International Finalists

85th out of 97 books — 2 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 1,302)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Oct 10, 2007 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars

A dissenter's point of view of the modern world, and the uncriticized assumptions and biases that it possesses. Robinson's flawless prose doesn't hurt either. Plus, her basic methodology is this:

1) I am a relatively intelligent person,
2) I consider myself capable of reading and understanding those thinkers and authors who have shaped the world
3) rather than reading the partisans who either deify or malign those thinkers, why don't I read them myself, and decide for myself what to think about the...more

8 likes · like · see review

Jul 23, 2007 Jacob rated it 3 of 5 stars

Marilynne Robinson is SERIOUS about ideas and Christianity and primary texts and the prevailing emptiness of American culture at present and the lightweightness of most semi-intellectuals. I love all this rigor.

And yet... sometimes she seems deliberately difficult. Demanding to the point of obscurity.

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 24, 2010 Tim rated it 5 of 5 stars

A sharp collection of essays. The introduction calls them contrarian and they are. Robinson never bows to consensus, is never cowardly in her choice of topics. If those choices do not always seem timely (especially the focus on Calvin), they certainly engaged me. Aside from Calvin she also addresses the Puritans (a favorite topic of mine - her discussion of modern priggishness as opposed to the Puritan vision of life is a delight), the loss of the humanities, and the modern rule of economics (fr...more A sharp collection of essays. The introduction calls them contrarian and they are. Robinson never bows to consensus, is never cowardly in her choice of topics. If those choices do not always seem timely (especially the focus on Calvin), they certainly engaged me. Aside from Calvin she also addresses the Puritans (a favorite topic of mine - her discussion of modern priggishness as opposed to the Puritan vision of life is a delight), the loss of the humanities, and the modern rule of economics (from the vantage of both Calvin - v. Weber - and Darwin). The title of the book comes from the essay "Darwinism," which ranges over 19th c. thought and the narrowness of vision (moral, creative, social among others) created by Darwinism. Other topics include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, abolitionists (where her history could be sharper, especially as she is writing about deficiencies in historical writing), the environmental crisis and the coercion of consensus (specifically in the denigration of the word liberal which she wants to rehabilitate). These essays are full of beautiful and arresting ideas, paragraphs and sentences. Sometimes the entire essay does not hold together as well as I could wish - instead of a complete argument there are assertions, beautifully made, and numerous digressions. They are not as complete as the essays of Wendell Berry or Joseph Epstein. But that does not mean they are not enjoyable, full of fresh thought and bold words arrestingly arrayed. Quite wonderful.

"Economics, the great model among us now, indulges and deprives, builds and abandons, threatens and promises. Its imperium is manifest, irrefragable - as in fact it has been since antiquity. Yet suddenly we act as if the reality of economics were reality itself, the one Truth to which everything must refer. I can only suggest that terror at complexity has driven us back on this very crude monism. We have reached a point where cosmology permits us to say that everything might in fact be made of nothing, so we cling desperately to the idea that something is real and necessary, and we have chosen, oddly enough, competition and market forces, taking refuge from the wild epic of cosmic ontogeny by hiding our head in a ledger book."

"Creationism is the best thing that could have happened to Darwinism, the caricature of religion that has seemed to justify Darwinist contempt for the whole of religion. Creationism has tended to obscure the fact that religion - precisely as the hope of the powerless and the mitagtor of the abuse of the weak - has indeed come under determined attack by people who have claimed the authority of science, and that Darwin's work was quite rightly seized upon by antireligionists who had other fish to fry than the mere demystification of cosmogony. I am speaking, as I know it is rude to do, of the Social Darwinists, the eugenicists, the Imperialists, the Social Scientists who showed such firmness in reshaping civilization in Eastern Europe, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere, and, yes, of the Nazis."

"Lately Americans have enjoyed pretending they are powerless, disenfranchised individually and deep in decline as society, perhaps to grant themselves latitude responsible people do not have or desire."

"Our collective fiction is full of anxiety, empty of humor and generosity. It elaborates itself in the manner of phobia or delusion rather than vision or fancy. We find comfort in anxiety because it engrosses our attention, which we have in surplus and are usually at a loss to employ."

"As a culture we are terrified of illness, though as people go we are rather safe from it. Perhaps to feed our anxiety, illness for us has overspilled definition and is now to be discovered elsewhere, in everyone. Emotions are regarded as symptoms and treated medically, including, of course, anxiety. This is true even while the boundless resources of the society seem largely bent to the work of stimulating fear, disgust, resentment - emotions that in fact are pathological and also pathogenic. It is as if we took morphine to help us sleep on a bed of nails. Another generation would have looked for another solution."

"There are things for which we in this culture clearly are indebted to [Calvin:], including relatively popular government, the relatively high status of women, the separation of church and state, what remains of universal schooling, and, while it lasted, liberal higher education, education in the 'humanities.' All this emanated, for our purposes, emanated from Geneva - in imperfect form, of course, but tending then toward improvement as it is now tending toward decline." (less)

1 like · like · see review

Apr 26, 2007 Joseph Pensak rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays

A defense of John Calvin from the halls of the UIowa Creative Writing Department? The sky is falling.

3 likes · like · see review

Aug 14, 2008 Megan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: utopia

Marilynne Robinson is a gift. The common thread through all of these diverse essays (ranging in topic from Darwinism to Maguerite de Navarre with many nods to John Calvin) is her loyalty to them. Its rare for a writer to so fully know their own mind and speak about what is important to her with such authority. She knows her subjects well and she knows the biases that the reader (me) carries with them. After reading this book I felt like I had met many historical figures for the first time. Becau...more

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 14, 2011 Tara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Oh, Marilynne. You made me want to read John Calvin. I only recently decided to read Augustine instead of judging him after reading other people talk about him, and now you've made me want to read Calvin.

Marilynne Robinson has one of the fairest, wisest minds I've ever encountered. When she makes a judgment I trust it, and that doesn't happen all too often. The lady read Marx and Calvin and everyone else. She read the source material. Our culture is throwing away the past with abandon, judging...more

1 like · like · see review

Chris Hi Tara, I liked your review. Question: from reading your review and others' on goodreads, I'm still not getting what's so great about Calvin. Other t...more
updated Aug 23, 2011 12:43pm

Tara Chris, I really appreciate you taking the time to ask me this! I feel bad, though, I don't have a quick answer. I think she showed that Calvin promote...more
Aug 25, 2011 08:10pm

Chris Thank you. That explains enough actually. And the fact that you mentioned Tillich pretty much seals the deal for me. In what work did he defend Calvin...more
Aug 26, 2011 07:31am

Feb 22, 2011 Justin Evans rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays

Great prose, backed with some good ideas and some dubious ones. Robinson makes sweeping generalizations that'll rub you the wrong way if you have any 'intellectual' pretensions at all, as I do, but most of them are fairly accurate. Her hope with this book is that her readers will go back to the study of history, or rather, the history of ideas, and take it very seriously. The problem is that the study of the history of ideas she seems to prefer is a little, well, tendentious: the 'truth' about C...more Great prose, backed with some good ideas and some dubious ones. Robinson makes sweeping generalizations that'll rub you the wrong way if you have any 'intellectual' pretensions at all, as I do, but most of them are fairly accurate. Her hope with this book is that her readers will go back to the study of history, or rather, the history of ideas, and take it very seriously. The problem is that the study of the history of ideas she seems to prefer is a little, well, tendentious: the 'truth' about Calvin is to be found *only* in his own writings, for instance, and the same goes for the American Founding Fathers and everyone else. Robinson seems unwilling to even consider the possibility that the rich and powerful are rather more likely to be liars, self-deceived, or both, and that specific historical circumstances have a huge influence on ideas in general.
This is part of a larger picture that she gives us in her essay on Darwinism and, more abstractly, in 'Facing Reality.' The idea there is that we've constructed a 'reality' for ourselves which ignores a number of very important and very real facts, both historical (Calvin) and contemporary (in short, the civilizing instinct). This 'realism' ends up ignoring or downplaying anything that can be considered a subjective experience: religion, of course, but also art, morality, compassion, altruism... A prime way of downplaying these experiences is to show how they've been used in the service of evil, so that 'religion' is identified with, say, 'the crusades,' rather than with Bonhoeffer. Her call to the study of ideas is meant to defend our cultural ideals from being identified with evil in this way, to suggest rather how we can identify the good in those ideals.
Occasionally she gets carried away with an idea and lets it ruin her argument, as for instance when she complains about people trying to overcome the causes of our discontent. "Might we no all have been kinder and saner," she asks, "if we had said that discontent is our natural condition?" Well, you might want to ask the following groups of people about that: serfs, slaves, the nineteenth century working class, the populations of colonized countries, the contemporary inhabitants of nations run by religious or military tyrants. In all of these cases "the obstacle to collective happiness" is indeed other people, but this belief did not and does not mean that "terrible things seem justified." In the rest of her essays Robinson stresses the need to overcome social injustice; why does she stoop to knee-jerk conservatism here? Because she doesn't like political correctness; because she rejects the idea that history and culture are "a vast repository of destructive notions and impulses." Well, I don't like PC, and I don't think history and culture are that, but that's not a reason to reject all social reforms.

I highly recommend the essays on the family, Bonhoeffer, Wilderness (mainly awful, actually, but leads to a very intelligent conclusion) and Darwinism. Unless you're jonesing for a defense of Calvin in the face of Whiggish, nineteenth century scholarship, you can probably skip 'Marguerite de Navarre.' Psalm Eight is autobiographical, and I think tedious, but maybe you like that kind of thing. The introduction just makes Robinson sound like someone who doesn't bother to read the books she's attacking, particularly Weber (whose point was that capitalism is just as much a subjective attitude as an objective fact, and that the praise of material success underpinned by theology was very good for the development of that subjective attitude; his point was not 'Calvin sucks, man.' This is another problem of Robinson's approach to ideas: Weber was engaged in a very serious intellectual dialogue, of which this book was a small part. It is important only in the context of that dialogue; if you want to complain about idiotic readings of his book, fair enough, but that's not his book anymore than witch burnings is Calvin's.) (less)

like · see review

Jan 10, 2012 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

The literature that I celebrate - remember or cherish the most, I suppose - is the literature that causes either little or large psychological revolutions, depending on the scale of the book (or the skill of the author). That an author - an author who wrote two of my favorite books I read last year - decided to write, at length, so astoundingly on the nature of modern thought itself was an opportunity not to be missed.

And boy was it not to be. The magnitude to which my process of thought about r...more The literature that I celebrate - remember or cherish the most, I suppose - is the literature that causes either little or large psychological revolutions, depending on the scale of the book (or the skill of the author). That an author - an author who wrote two of my favorite books I read last year - decided to write, at length, so astoundingly on the nature of modern thought itself was an opportunity not to be missed.

And boy was it not to be. The magnitude to which my process of thought about religion, Darwinism, or the basic assumptions I have about history - that historical figures kind of rise out of the white noise of history because of their exceptional nature - have been called into question. Sometimes history can gloss over the unsung. Sometimes religion is not the abject enemy that the new atheist movement's hostile priggishness makes it out to be. No book in recent memory has spurned the degree of psychological and emotional re-evaluation as The Death of Adam has done for me recently. I wish to retroactively upgrade my critique of Absence of Mind, as that book really does serve as a subsequent companion piece for this one, and I wish I'd read them in the opposite order I had.

Robinson has called into question, for me, my own hasty disregard for the faithful, my own priggishness in fashionable uses of language, my own illusory and phony liberalism that shows little to no regard for the abjectly impoverished. The book encourages one to examine the assumptions made - about the Bible, about the environment, even eating fish - and the principles espoused, and the truths delivered at face value that are simply not so. She shows the fabrication that is history, and also the importance of myth, even in facets of culture that pretend that they've eradicated myth completely. It's made me a believer in the best way, and a skeptic in the best way. I've learned how socially liberal measures are economically poisonous. I've learned how the right answers are not in the summations granted of different scholars at an institution, but rather in delving into the primary texts themselves; I've learned that certain figures of the past can have unjustly soiled reputations, that obscure figures ought to be rescued if they can, and that history, and our chronicling of it, is no meritocracy. The assumption of such is preposterous, and yet we function on this ludicrous positing everyday. Even in our consumption of news and media. I learned how to read old text within a more reasoned context, and the strange nature consensus has taken in modern discourse.

What else is so brilliant is that my critiques of The Death of Adam - one being that its treatises on history are so skeptical that it shoots itself in the foot by adding its own perspective on history, or that I am hesitant to take certain analyses at face value for various reasons - were borne out of the lessons I garnered from The Death of Adam itself. And I think that is sort of what the miracle of education entails. Robinson's gift is generous enough - the tools to equip one with a further liberated mind from the shackles of modern psychological schematics - to offer its own results to dissection. The awe and psychological change - the seismic shift in opinion and evaluation of truths great and small - cannot be captured adequately in this succinct evaluation. Beautifully written and refreshing, and so pervasively influential to my own thoughts in such a short period of time I could not possibly capture them at this point. The march into the future is not a march into progress, necessarily.

The book makes me self-conscious of my own priggishness, as I mentioned before. As much as I want to force this book on people, I am cognizant of the consequences of so whole-heartedly adopting another's principles and enforcing them dogmatically, just as I had done in my Dawkins phase. For this, I only have the book itself to thank. Such is the influence the book has on the notion of thought itself. This is not about the comprehension of ideas, but the comprehension of the thought around these ideas.

This review is wholly inadequate to encapsulate the cognitive impact, but I am still reeling. It is glorious when literature can facilitate a self-renaissance, as it can be wont to do. Beyond simple entertainment - which has its benefits - or satire and cynicism, there is the literature that accommodates those striving for that constant growth of self and mind. This is that literature. The Death of Adam graciously embraces those people, and gives them a lot more than most books could hope to offer. Incredible read.(less)

like · see review

Mar 20, 2009 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Everything always bears looking into, astonishing as that fact is."

Marilynne Robinson's collection of essays is a deeply rewarding, if occasionally trying, selection of her shorter works. In these eleven essays, Robinson turns her discerning eye on the framework of contemporary American culture. While The Death of Adam addresses a variety of topics, her most compelling essays revolve around the interaction between society and nature, arguing vehemently in support of a wider environmental consci...more

like · see review

Nov 11, 2007 Jessica added it

I found this today at the thrift store, and instantly started weeping into a slightly chipped Flushing Fairgrounds commemorative mug. Reading this will be my reward if I somehow manage to produce two papers by Wednesday.

I looooooove you Marilynne Robinson! I can't wait to find out what it is that you have to say.

Booksters will have to wait breathlessly and see if I emerge at the other end a confirmed Calvinist.

1 like · like · see review

May 09, 2010 Lobstergirl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I hadn't read any of Robinson's well-regarded novels or essays when I came across this collection by accident, misshelved at the library, just a New Yorker review that mentioned she was serious about religion. She is, very (although she calls herself a pagan too). What she is undoubtedly is a scholar. She reads texts closely, and she unhesitatingly criticizes those who haven't bothered to (including Lord Acton, Max Weber, Simon Schama, and Daniel Dennett, all faulted for their misreadings of Joh...more

7 likes · like · see review

Apr 13, 2013 Matthew rated it 5 of 5 stars

Usually if I saw a cover that said "Essays on Modern Thought" I would turn the other way. But after reading Robinson's incredible novel Gilead, I decided to give this book a try. Wow, I am glad I did. She ambitiously re-presents the ideologies that helped shape early America. Whether she's tackling the topic of Darwin, Puritans, or Psalm 8, she combines a fierce intellectualism (I loved it) with an ability for description that will leave you aching from its beauty. She's at her best when describ...more

like · see review

Aug 21, 2007 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone who gets a kick out of opinionated and well argued essays with a theological bent.

The best defense--the only defense of Calvinist thought I've ever read. Robinson's lovely long sentences wind you around a thought and drop you easily on the other side. I'd love to talk with someone about her faith-based arguments.

1 like · like · see review

May 08, 2008 Joseph Kugelmass rated it 5 of 5 stars

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times -- nobody reads good essays about contemporary Calvinism anymore!

2 likes · like · see review

Nov 14, 2010 Daniel Lower rated it 4 of 5 stars

An intriguing collection of essays about modern thought and historical controversies, particularly regarding what happens when Calvinist theology is situated in its actual context, Calvin's money-quotes are given their actual context (or maybe rather, modern Calvinism being given the context of Calvin), and also regarding what happens when the dominant--and even the counter-cultural-- narratives of our culture don't quite work. Ends on a minor key. But quite good for those who want to see an exp...more

like · see review

Jun 19, 2011 Sarahlynn Lester is currently reading it

This one is slow going, but rewarding. So far I've got: we have this idea that what we learn in school is strictly for the purposes of obtaining a grade, credit, or diploma rather than the knowledge being an end unto itself. So by adding things to the curriculum we make them obsolete.

Also, John Calvin has been horribly misrepresented in many scholarly texts.

And there was something else really important from the beginning of the introduction but I'll need to wait until the book and I are in the s...more

like · see review

Dec 15, 2010 Kathleen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Robinson is an amazing scholar and writer, of boundless wisdom and compassion. It doesn't seem to trouble her at all to take the unpopular or unconventional view of things, which might surprise people who connect this book with some kind of conventional morality or reinstatement of Puritanical Calvinism. In fact, she shows us the evidence that John Calvin was not a puritanical prude but was in fact a French thinker, Jean Cauvin. And she shows us his "warts and all" as they say.

This is a book tha...more

like · see review

Sep 07, 2010 Steven rated it 4 of 5 stars

Marilynne Robinson's deep intellect and lifelong study of Christian intellectuals is on full display in this collection of essays. The two essays at its heart, which give an exhaustive history and study of John Calvin's lost influence in contemporary Christianity, are definitely only for the intrepid reader willing to parse through the theological discourse to find Ms. Robinson's astute points about what so-called religious people have lost in America's homogenized versions of the various Christ...more

like · see review

Apr 23, 2010 Petrea rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: petrea-s-book-shelf

While I loved her novel, Gilead, I found this book of essays tough going. for one thing she seemed to be having an argument with someone and we never got to hear that side---but I think it was with her fellow college professors who are apparently cynical about religion--she certainly used a vocabulary and sentences meant to impress them! Sometimes her sentences and phrases were really amazing, but mostly I don't think one needs to try that hard to say what one believes--if one is sure about one'...more

like · see review

Dec 17, 2009 Bronson rated it 3 of 5 stars

I chose to give this book 3 stars because I am only comparing it to her novels and I enjoyed those more. This was an interesting work and for me it was worthwhile because of one essay, Psalm 8 and that boiled down to one paragraph. There aren't many paragraphs that I would consider merit reading 263 pages just to be able to experience one thought, but for me this is one of those. I'll quote it here and hope that Marilynne Robinson isn't offended that I cite the whole paragraph. See what you thin...more

1 like · like · see review

May 24, 2008 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Amy by: Nora

This is a book about America, specifically about the religious thought that has influenced our country's formation and changes. The first few essays tackle subjects ranging from Darwinism to the abolitionists. For a while I could see similarities between these essays and some of Wendell Berry's. Both value community and question things we consider to be "progress."

That was all fine by me, but I am admitting that I am not finishing this book. I was actually taking notes, even writing my first ou...more

like · see review

Jul 14, 2009 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: we-own, religion, favorites, non-fiction

Despite the likelihood that the intellectually concordal relationship between John Calvin and Marguerite de Navarre deserves a book of its own in which to breathe (its treatment feels too circumscribed in the 52 pages allotted it here), and despite "Wilderness" feeling too much like an afterthought written in the wake of Robinson's controversial Mother Country (or a warm-up to that book), and despite the final piece ("The Tyranny of Petty Coercion") exhibiting (at times) the sort of convoluted a...more

like · see review

Apr 01, 2012 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

This collection of Robinson's essays covers a wide-ranging variety of topics. Science, history, religion, the environment, and ethics form the bulk of her interest, many of these issues crossing into essays ostensibly on other topics. This cross-pollination ends up being quite productive, leading to helpful and at times provocative insights.

The standout essays for me were "Darwinism," "Facing Reality," "Puritans and Prigs," and "Wilderness." Robinson's excoriation of Darwinist thinking offers a...more

1 like · like · see review

Mar 26, 2012 Theresa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Each of these essays is engaging and provocative. Overall, Robinson thinks that we have sold ourselves short. We've reduced our sense of who we are and this has impoverished our lives. We have replaced graciousness with meanness, generosity and a sense of beauty with a narrow rationalism. We have become anxious, needlessly.
I return again and again to her essay, "Psalm Eight". It's a work of art in both form and content. Nourishing and inspiring.

like · see review

Feb 29, 2012 Alex rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Makes most other contemporary intellectual discourse seem as thin as the paper on which it's printed. The arguments are sincere and grounded in close readings of oft-neglected texts. I cannot recommend this enough for anyone trying to put his or her finger on this sense of unease and anxiety that permeates the world in which we now live.

like · see review

Feb 27, 2009 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

cranky and brainy essays by a wonderful novelist, author of gilead and housekeeping -- A large part of her argument is rehabilitating aspects of christian tradition that are in disfavor in our time: calvin, the puritans, mcguffey readers and the abolitionist christian culture of the 19th c. midwest. She also weighs in against Darwinism, in a surprisingly convincing essay.

like · see review

Apr 24, 2013 Jack Wolfe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-wolfe-canon

If there is a more satisfyingly provocative collection of essays out there, I haven't read it. A convincing defense of the humanities, a disturbing challenge to all religious believers and non-believers, and a total blast. My introduction to Marilynne, who in my opinion is the finest American stylist of the last three decades.

like · see review

May 09, 2009 Adriel rated it 4 of 5 stars

I grew up in the Calvinist Reformed tradition, but this book helped me think about Calvin in a new light. I think I'm going to pick up some biographies and the Institutes to think about recasting the American political tradition in relation to Calvin contra Locke and Smith. We'll see what can be done...

like · see review

Jan 28, 2009 Alisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Very thought provoking. Full disclosure: Didn't finish it. I read the essay on Darwin which really messed with me and the one on family, which is reprinted elsewhere. It articulated some disturbing trends in our culture that I agree with, but felt shaken by it just the same. Not a light read.

like · see review

Jan 22, 2011 Simona rated it 5 of 5 stars

So far brilliant, but I am forced to read it slowly, in order to fully process the connections she draws between things like Calvinism, the act of writing, social darwinism, science, faith etc. Incredibly insightful. She is one of my favorite contemporary writers.

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 43 44 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (2)

Genres

Writing > Essays

29 users

Non Fiction

23 users

Philosophy

17 users

Religion > Theology

13 users

History

10 users

Religion

7 users

Science

4 users

Criticism > Literary Criticism

4 users

Religion > Christianity

4 users

Spirituality

3 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Marilynne Robinson

Her 1980 novel, Housekeeping, won a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for best first novel and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Her second novel, Gilead, was acclaimed by critics and received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the 2005 Ambassador Book Award.

Her third novel, Home, was published in 2008 and was nominated f...more

More about Marilynne Robinson...

Books by Marilynne Robinson

Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About The Death of Adam...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from The Death of Adam: Ess...

“I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it.” — 10 people liked it

“I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of the miracle is here, among us. The eternal as an idea is much less preposterous than time, and this very fact should seize our attention.” — 5 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought
avg rating	preview: The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought Goodreads rating: 4.09 (464 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114809.The_Death_of_Adam?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348331696l/114809.jpg[/img][/url] [url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114809.The_Death_of_Adam?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought by Marilynne Robinson[/url]

The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website