Book description
The New Yorker staff writer Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History.A national bestseller and "hugely ambitious, unmistakably brilliant" (Janet Maslin, New York Times) book about the creation of modern American thought.The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and the founder of semiotics. The Club was probably in existence for about nine months. No records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea—an idea about ideas. This book is the story of that idea.Holmes, James, and Peirce all believed that ideas are not things "out there" waiting to be discovered but are tools people invent—like knives and forks and microchips—to make their way in the world. They thought that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals—that ideas are social. They do not develop according to some inner logic of their own but are entirely dependent, like germs, on their human carriers and environment. And they thought that the survival of any idea depends not on its immutability but on its adaptability.The Metaphysical Club is written in the spirit of this idea about ideas. It is not a history of philosophy but an absorbing narrative about personalities and social history, a story about America. It begins with the Civil War and ends in 1919 with Justice Holmes's dissenting opinion in the case of U.S. v. Abrams—the basis for the constitutional law of free speech. The first four sections of the book focus on Holmes, James, Peirce, and their intellectual heir, John Dewey. The last section discusses some of the fundamental twentieth-century ideas they are associated with. This is a book about a way of thinking that changed American life."
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Playing a wide variety of audio formats
Works on all devices with iOS 13 and newer
Huge amount of features for a small price
Frequent updates to add new features and improve existing ones
Advanced playback controls
Live sound processing
Changing the timbre of the reader's voice and noise reduction
Translated into more than 20 languages
If you love listening to fiction audiobooks, ListenBook has features to make the process easier.
Edit book data: title, author, cover
Use equalizer to make the sound comfortable for you
Adjust the playback speed
Enjoy dark and light app themes
Supported formats: MP3, M4B, AWB, FLAC, OGG audio files and many more (must be DRM free)
Auto-Bookmarks make it easy to find your place
AirPlay support allows redirection of audio output.
VoiceOver support
Dark mode for night owls
Convenient bookmarking system helps you mark the most important places.
Unlimited bookmarks for each audiobook
Put your own cover on the wager
Share your audiobook with friends
Lock-screen control
Customise app with extensive options
Sleep timer with shake to reset, set custom notification sounds, and a few unique options
Auto rewind depending on paused time, customize rewind times to your liking
Removing background noise from recordings made in classrooms and meetings
Changing the timbre of the reader's voice for a better listening experience