RollnSmoke Reviews: ANGELS AND AGES

Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln and Modern Life by Adam Gopnik (Knopf, 2009).

I very much enjoyed Adam Gopnik’s two previous memoirs Paris to the Moon and Through the Children’s Gate, each light, journalistic gems that capture intimate moments and thoughts about his family life abroad and in New York City. It’s possible that achieving a true appreciation for this more recent endeavor by Gopnik requires a sharper mind than my own, but the thesis that he posits which joins the icon of emancipation (Abraham Lincoln) with the icon of evolution (Charles Darwin) is as meandering as the title suggests. Most interesting is the somewhat trivial fact that Darwin and Lincoln share a birthday (February 12, 1809) as well as the less well-known fact that both men endured tragic deaths of their favorite children. In fact, it’s only when Gopnik explores the personal aspects of these well known historical figures that the reader’s interest is peaked. Otherwise, Gopnik’s comparative thematic thread is bogged down by his own obscure interests and streaming philosophy and remains tenuous at best and sometimes even boring (6/10).