The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “charles darwin”

The Table Comes First: Adam Gopnik on the Meaning of Food
The Table Comes First: Adam Gopnik on the Meaning of Food

A cultural history of our modern culinary obsession.

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Literary Action Figures
Literary Action Figures

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Carrots and the Roots of Kindness, from Leo and Sophia Tolstoy to Ross Gay
Carrots and the Roots of Kindness, from Leo and Sophia Tolstoy to Ross Gay

A lovely reminder that “kindness and kin have the same mother.”

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Life, Death, and What Fills the Interlude with Meaning: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Stirring Diary Reflections on His Dying Mother and His Five-Year-Old Daughter
Life, Death, and What Fills the Interlude with Meaning: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Stirring Diary Reflections on His Dying Mother and His Five-Year-Old Daughter

“I saw my little Una… so full of spirit and life that she was life itself. And then I looked at my poor dying mother, and seemed to see the whole of human existence at once, standing in the dusty midst of it.”

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Snakes, Dragons, and the Power of Music: Strange and Wondrous 18th-Century Illustrations of Real and Mythic Serpents
Snakes, Dragons, and the Power of Music: Strange and Wondrous 18th-Century Illustrations of Real and Mythic Serpents

“That there is not a wise Purpose in every thing that is made because we do not understand it, is as absurd as for a Man to say, there is no such thing as Light, because he is blind and has no Eyes to see it.”

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Digital Humanities Spotlight: 7 Important Digitization Projects
Digital Humanities Spotlight: 7 Important Digitization Projects

From Darwin’s marginalia to Voltaire’s correspondence, or what Dalí’s controversial World’s Fair pavilion has to do with digital myopia.

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History, Animated, Quick and Uneuphemistic
History, Animated, Quick and Uneuphemistic

The moon hoax, why Nixon lost the debate, and what dinosaurs have to do with Gerald Ford and a chicken.

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I Feel, Therefore I Am: Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on Consciousness as a Full-Body Phenomenon
I Feel, Therefore I Am: Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on Consciousness as a Full-Body Phenomenon

“Ultimately, we are puppets of both pain and pleasure, occasionally made free by our creativity.”

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The Optimism of the Oyster
The Optimism of the Oyster

From the rudiments of consciousness to the redemptions of conservation, with a side of existential reckoning.

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The Great Barrier Reef: Stunning 19th-Century Illustrations from the World’s First Encyclopedia of One of Earth’s Most Vibrant and Delicate Ecosystems
The Great Barrier Reef: Stunning 19th-Century Illustrations from the World’s First Encyclopedia of One of Earth’s Most Vibrant and Delicate Ecosystems

A symphonic hymn for our planet’s lushest underwater wonderland.

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