Emerson's Life in Science: The Culture of Truth (association copy)

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. First edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. An association copy, a book uncommon signed and here inscribed to a faculty mentor at Indiana University on the title page: "To ----, Eleven years ago, over coffee in the Ballantine Lounge, you told me my next book should be on idealism. I scoffed, but as usual, you were right--and here it is. Without your inspiration, I would not have found the courage to dare so much. Mere thanks are, as ever, not enough. With deepest gratitude and respect, Laura Dassow Walls, March 17, 2003."

A distinguished professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, Laura Dassow Walls received her PhD at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the recipient shared and fostered her commitment to science and environmental writing, which is also the focus of the book. As the jacket explains, "Emerson has traditionally been cast as a dreamer and mystic ... [but] helped to establish science as the popular norm of truth in the United States." Walls has become one of the foremost biographers related to science and the natural world; she is best known for her recent definitive biography of Thoreau, and she is now at work on a biography of Barry Lopez. A fine book in fine jacket.