When you think of the Harlem Renaissance, who comes to mind? Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes? W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey? Whoever it is, chances are that it’s not Alain Locke, despite his deep influence on these and countless other key figures and his definitive anthology The New Negro, from which the movement took its name. Locke’s life story has languished untold until now, but Alain L. Locke—the first biography of this extraordinarily gifted thinker and architect of the Harlem Renaissance—finally reclaims his rightful place in the pantheon of America’s most important minds. In this engaging account, Leonard Harris and Charles Molesworth trace Locke’s life and times through his Philadelphia upbringing, his undergraduate years at Harvard—where William James helped spark his influential engagement with pragmatism—and his tenure as the first African American Rhodes Scholar. The heart of their narrative illuminates Locke’s heady years in 1920s New York City and his forty-year career at Howard University, where he helped spearhead the adult education movement of the 1930s and wrote on topics ranging from the philosophy of value to the theory of democracy.
An enthusiastic interlocutor and promoter of cultural figures from John Dewey to Jacob Lawrence, . . .
‘Tis the Season for Discomedusae
A prominent promoter of Darwin in Germany, Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a pioneering biologist in his own right: he gave currency to the idea of the “missing link” between apes and man, formulated the concept of ecology, and promulgated the “biogenetic law”—the idea that the embryo of an advanced species recapitulates the stages the species went through in its evolutionary descent. But today, with detractors ranging from paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould to modern-day creationists and advocates of Intelligent Design, Haeckel is dogged by accusations of forgery and unfortunate associations with National Socialism. The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought aims to rehabilitate this tattered reputation, and, as the Times Literary Supplement noted earlier this year, “ Richards suceeds brilliantly in re-establishing Haeckel as a significant scientist and a major figure in the history of evolutionary thought.”
In the field, a sketch pad was as essential to Haeckel as a microscope, and his extraordinary scientific illustrations—of undulating siphonophorae and crouched embryos—remain icons of biological art. And, at least according to John Holbo over at Crooked Timber, they are perfect for seasons greetings. Holbo has created a Flickr gallery featuring manipulations of plates from . . .
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