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A review by kevinjfellows
Figuring by Maria Popova
4.0
Figuring is a series of interconnected essays that flow not unlike Maria Popova's blog, brainpickings.org. It does not flow like a driven, focused narrative, and though that appears to be intentional, it was not a structure that delivered the book's message as strongly as it could have. Popova weaves the intellectual and personal biographies of several nineteenth-century women through fascinating details of time, place, and common relationships. She traces the intellectual lineages of these women, largely from Margaret Fuller, through some of the twentieth-century's greatest intellects, such as Rachel Carson.
The connective tissue in these essays is Margaret Fuller. I wanted to know more about her though there may not be much more to know without reading all the source material. I still wished the narrative had been more cohesive and structured more directly on how Fuller changed the thinking and lives of people a century after she lived. The narrative is loose and sparse. It is not journalistic, but cerebral, as if Popova is thinking about these people and their thoughts on the page.
For anyone doubting the power of thought to connect people separated by time and distance, this book should remove that doubt. Revealed are the strong willed, intelligent, women of the nineteenth-century and how they influenced so much while rarely receiving credit for it. Margaret Fuller was one who did receive accolades but the male-washing of the years after her death has left us with little memory of her power. Thanks to Maria Popova Margaret and the other women get full credit.
The connective tissue in these essays is Margaret Fuller. I wanted to know more about her though there may not be much more to know without reading all the source material. I still wished the narrative had been more cohesive and structured more directly on how Fuller changed the thinking and lives of people a century after she lived. The narrative is loose and sparse. It is not journalistic, but cerebral, as if Popova is thinking about these people and their thoughts on the page.
For anyone doubting the power of thought to connect people separated by time and distance, this book should remove that doubt. Revealed are the strong willed, intelligent, women of the nineteenth-century and how they influenced so much while rarely receiving credit for it. Margaret Fuller was one who did receive accolades but the male-washing of the years after her death has left us with little memory of her power. Thanks to Maria Popova Margaret and the other women get full credit.