More than two centuries after his birth, Ralph Waldo Emerson remains one of the presiding spirits in American culture. Yet his reputation as the starry-eyed prophet of self-reliance has obscured a much more complicated figure, who spent a lifetime wrestling with injustice, philosophy, art, desire, and suffering. James Marcus introduces readers to this Emerson, a writer of self-interrogating genius whose visionary flights are always grounded in Yankee...

"Being the adventures of a young man who couldn't resist pretty girls, or a bit of the old ultra-violence, who went to jail, was re-conditioned, and came out a different young man. Or was he?" So might opine your humble narrator, Alex. Alex and his droogs Georgie, Dim, and Pete are bored. Alex loves Ludwig van, milk bars, and mayhem. One night a botched burglary ends in murder. Apprehended by the police, Alex is tried, sentenced, and sent to prison...