Andrea Wulf's Blog, page 8
September 13, 2022
New York Times: "An 18th-Century Philosopher to Get Us Through the Climate Crisis"
Here is an article that I wrote in New York Times about Schelling and how his philosophy of oneness is still very relevant today.
click here for New York Times
or download PDF
September 11, 2022
Atlantic: Where Our Sense of Self Comes From
And here is an article I wrote for The Atlantic about Fichte and our modern self.
The Observer: Review "Magnificent Rebels"
���Exhilarating book illuminates a group of extraordinary thinkers ��� this is indeed an electrifying book, in its illuminated portraits, its dynamic narrative and its sparking ideas. Wulf writes clear, flowing prose, which is a pleasure to read. It���s informed by scholarship without being bogged down by jargon. Her book begins with an autobiographical prologue, explaining how, as the impulsive child of progressive parents, she chose to leave school early, rather than going to university, and became a single mother at a young age, learning in the process to balance free-spiritedness and responsibility. This introduction is appropriate, because her experience mirrors that of the woman at the heart of the story, Caroline Schlegel��� ��� The Observer
click here for full review
September 1, 2022
Times Literary Supplement: Review "Magnificent Rebels"
���A vivid portrait of the German coterie who launched Romanticism��� Andrea Wulf���s Magnificent Rebels is an ambitious, engaging and effusive account ��� Wulf is excellent at this kind of descriptive prose, evoking the sights and smells of the city with an almost classical enargia. We feel the excitement of living through the period alongside her vivid characters ��� Wulf���s book reads as much like a novel as an intellectual biography ��� It is a considerable achievement��� ��� Times Literary Supplement
Financial Times: Review "Magnificent Rebels"
���Wulf���s wonderful new book ��� Magnificent Rebels recreates the shining moment, between roughly 1794 and 1806, when these figures congregated in Jena ��� In a gripping account of what she calls the ���Jena Set��� (which was intellectually and emotionally as complex as the Bloomsbury Group), Wulf brings the dramatis personae compellingly to life��� ��� Financial Times
click here for full review
Daily Telegraph: Review "Magnificent Rebels"
And a lovely review in Daily Telegraph:
���With narrative verve buttressed by scrupulous research, Andrea Wulf has tracked this history in unfailingly lucid fashion ��� Avoiding metaphysical warrens and blind alleys, Wulf keeps a firm grasp on this broader historical context as well as the narrower intellectual controversies, but her primary interest is the personal interaction of a set of supremely intelligent men and women whose intense friendships and feuds, collaborations and affairs, can aptly be compared to that of the Bloomsbury Group or the Parisian modernists. ��� [Wulf���s] book has an irresistible panache marvellously appropriate to the story of these high-pitched personalities, and it is rich in telling anecdotes���
August 28, 2022
Sunday Times: Review "Magnificent Rebels"
And another fabulous review ... still a few days until publication.
���Magnificent Rebels is a thrilling intellectual history that reads more like a racy but intelligent novel or even a very superior soap opera where the characters are almost all oddballs, but geniuses ��� For a few short years, though, the little town of Jena blazed with a youthful, daring and intellectual creativity rarely matched elsewhere and Magnificent Rebels captures this brilliantly��� ��� Sunday Times
click here for a link ... or Download Sunday Times review for the PDF
The Times: Best Books of 2022
And The Times chose "Magnificent Rebels" as one of the Best Books of 2022!!
���This witty, gossipy, sparkling history shows how the German city of Jena in the 1790s fizzed with creative energy. It was there that the first Romantics, led by the mighty Goethe, rebelled against the dreary rationalism of the Enlightenment��� ��� The Times, Best Books of 2022
click here for link to The Times ... or for PDF of the full list Download The Times - Best books of 2022
August 25, 2022
The Spectator: Review "Magnificent Rebels"
Yeah ... another great review: ���Engrossing new book ��� Magnificent Rebels is a magnificent book: a revelation which could easily become an obsession.���
click here for full review
August 17, 2022
The Times: Review & Book of the Week - "Magnificent Rebels"
The first proper review is in. And it's a amazing. Here is the short quote from it: ���Andrea Wulf���s delightful and invigorating book Magnificent Rebels ��� a worthy successor to her acclaimed study of von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature��� ��� Book of the Week, The Times
But I particularly like this bit ... the nerdy scholar in me is very happy:
"The secret of Wulf���s achievement is in the ���notes��� at the end of Magnificent Rebels, a great wedge of a section so thick it brings the reader to an unexpected halt two thirds of the way through the book���s bulk. Magnificent Rebels is a triumph of unseen toil, hardly suspected by the reader, in the midst of the sociable whirl of the main narrative. But all the time you realise Wulf has been sweating away out of sight, in the dim caverns of archives and the flickering, unvisited galleries of notes and appendices. Triumphantly, the book is not touched with one speck of archival dust, nor does it sag with any sign of exhaustion in the academic salt mines. The reader is simply presented with bright jewels of anecdote: Goethe lowering a piece of cake on a string from his study window to children playing below; Hegel dodging Napoleon���s invading soldiers to get the manuscript of The Phenomenology of the Spirit out of town. But above all the glitter of the parties, feuds and gossip that are so frequently inseparable from intellectual life".
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