"Of all of Emerson's biographers, James Marcus is the first to make the man and his thought come alive in the present. His Emerson is a marvel--a skeptic and an apostle, a creature of flawed feelings and noble ideals, a lover, a mourner, a wit, and a visionary. How lucky we are to encounter him through Marcus's wonderfully exact and affable prose." --Merve Emre, Wesleyan University, contributing writer at The New Yorker "Modern readers of Emerson are sometimes plagued by the question of relevance. Why wrestle with a frock-coated philosopher who stumbled through the world two centuries ago, when today the polar caps are melting and mining magnates are looking at the Moon? With Glad to the Brink of Fear , the issue of timing is finally moot. In these brisk, beautiful chapters, James Marcus explores the Transcendentalist life that was Emerson's--and offers a rich and textured way to contemplate meaning in the life that is yours." --Robert Sullivan, author of The Thoreau You Don't Know " Glad to the Brink of Fear is a stirring, elegant, and probing journey through the life and mind of one of our nation's most influential thinkers. Emerson comes alive in these pages, with all his moods, idiosyncrasies, and brilliance.

The reader will come to know Emerson, but just as profoundly, Marcus teaches us how to read Emerson, a philosopher whose explorations of self, nation, knowledge, and belief remain relevant today." --Imani Perry, author of South to America: A Journey below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation " Glad to the Brink of Fear is joyful, humane, complex, thoughtful, moving, funny, and personal, all while staying true to a contemporary reading of Transcendentalism. This is a tremendous and relevant book that has all the variation and unpredictability of the essay as practiced by Ralph Waldo Emerson himself." --Rick Moody, author of The Long Accomplishment.