A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 us to this Emerson, a writer of self-interrogating genius whose visionary flights are always grounded in Yankee shrewdness. Co-sponsored by the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association.