Curiosity

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Call Number: 814.54 Ma
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	814.54 Ma	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"Curiosity has been seen through the ages as the impulse that drives our knowledge forward and the temptation that leads us toward dangerous and forbidden waters. The question "Why?" has appeared under a multiplicity of guises and in vastly different contexts throughout the chapters of human history. Why does evil exist? What is beauty? How does language inform us? What defines our identity? What is our responsibility to the world? In this book, Alberto Manguel's most personal work to date, the author tracks his own life of curiosity through the books that have mapped his way. Manguel chooses as his guides a selection of writers who sparked his imagination in new directions. He dedicates each chapter to a single thinker, scientist, artist, or other figure who demonstrated in a fresh way how to ask "Why?" Leading us through a full gallery of inquisitives, among them Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Lewis Carroll, Rachel Carson, Socrates, and, most importantly, Dante, Manguel affirms how deeply connected our curiosity is to the readings that most astonish us, and how essential to the soaring of our own imaginations"-- Provided by publisher.

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Asking "why" is as important in the asking as in the answer that is expected or delivered submitted by sVfGI7Glt2pz7GZgVB90 on August 11, 2019, 8:55am Manguel draws on numerous writers and texts to find fresh ways to ask essential questions: How Do We Reason? Who Am I? What Are We Doing Here? Why Do Things Happen? What Comes Next? Sophisticated and intellectual, this book is a carnival of critical reading---a thought-provoking, pleasant and indispensable craft that is in danger these days of becoming a lost art.