Death Of Adam

ESSAYS''AMERICAN CULTURE IS ENRICHED BY HAVING THE WHOLE RANGE of Marilynne Robinson's work,'' declared The Boston Globe. Whether rescuing Calvinism and its creator, the French theologian Jean Calvin, from the repressive puritan stereotype, or considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by midwestern abolitionists, or the divide between the Bible and Darwinism, Marilynne Robinson repeatedly sends her reader back to the primary texts that are central to the development of American culture but are little read or acknowledged today. This is a passionate and provocative celebration of ideas, the old arts of civilization, and life's mystery, as Robinson writes in ''Psalm Eight'': ''I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes... The scene of miracle is here, among us.''''A valuable contribution to American life and letters.'' - KATHLEEN NORRIS''A useful antidote to the increasingly crude and slogan-loving culture we inhabit.'' -DORIS LESSING''This is a grand, sweeping, blazing, brilliant, life-changing book.'' - ROBERT D. RICHARDSON, JR.''Robinson's thinking is all in the service of humanity's survival, spiritually and environmentally.'' - CHARLES BAXTER''One of Robinson's great merits as an essayist is her refusal to take her opinions secondhand. Her book is a goad to renewed curiosity.'' - The New York Times Book Review