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Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos, Vol. 1: The Immense Journey / The Firmament of Time / The Unexpected Universe / Uncollected Prose
To read Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) is to renew a sense of wonder at the miracles and paradoxes of evolution and the ever-changing diversity of life. At the height of a distinguished career as a “bone-hunter” and paleontologist, Eiseley turned from fieldwork and scientific publication to the personal essay in six remarkable books that are masterpieces of prose style. Weaving together anecdote, philosophical reflection, and keen observation with the soul and skill of a poet, Eiseley offers a brilliant, companionable introduction to the sciences, paving the way for writers like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Now for the first time, the Library of America presents his landmark essay collections in a definitive two-volume set.
Eiseley’s debut collection, The Immense Journey (1957), displays his far-reaching knowledge and boundless curiosity about the mysteries of the natural world. Here are vivid accounts of prehistoric ecosystems, the origins of consciousness, the search for “living fossils” at the bottom of the sea, and the complexities of our evolutionary inheritance. Here too are literary qualities and aspirations that led many to hail Eiseley as a “modern Thoreau”: his quest for the ultimate meanings and cosmological significance of natural phenomena, along with his immense expressive gifts.
The Firmament of Time (1960), a lyrical and meditative tour de force, looks back at the many ways in which the sciences have been shaped by the changing cultures in which they developed. Examining the role of metaphor in scientific thought, anticipations of scientific discoveries in the works of poets and novelists, and the “unconscious conformity” of scientific theory to prevailing orthodoxies, Eiseley argues provocatively for the ongoing relevance to scientific progress of dreams, the imagination, and the irrational.
In his wide-ranging collection The Unexpected Universe (1969), Eiseley turns to the theme of the voyage of discovery: accounts of the mythical and historic journeys of Odysseus, Captain Cook, and Darwin frame his own more modest wanderings in the environs of Philadelphia. Sometimes he travels no farther than the local dump: and yet, like Homer’s hero or these great explorers, he continually finds a universe “not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
As an added feature, this volume presents a selection of Eiseley’s uncollected prose, including early autobiographical sketches, vivid and haunting entries from his private notebooks, and his 1957 lecture “Neanderthal Man and the Dawn of Human Paleontology.”
Eiseley’s debut collection, The Immense Journey (1957), displays his far-reaching knowledge and boundless curiosity about the mysteries of the natural world. Here are vivid accounts of prehistoric ecosystems, the origins of consciousness, the search for “living fossils” at the bottom of the sea, and the complexities of our evolutionary inheritance. Here too are literary qualities and aspirations that led many to hail Eiseley as a “modern Thoreau”: his quest for the ultimate meanings and cosmological significance of natural phenomena, along with his immense expressive gifts.
The Firmament of Time (1960), a lyrical and meditative tour de force, looks back at the many ways in which the sciences have been shaped by the changing cultures in which they developed. Examining the role of metaphor in scientific thought, anticipations of scientific discoveries in the works of poets and novelists, and the “unconscious conformity” of scientific theory to prevailing orthodoxies, Eiseley argues provocatively for the ongoing relevance to scientific progress of dreams, the imagination, and the irrational.
In his wide-ranging collection The Unexpected Universe (1969), Eiseley turns to the theme of the voyage of discovery: accounts of the mythical and historic journeys of Odysseus, Captain Cook, and Darwin frame his own more modest wanderings in the environs of Philadelphia. Sometimes he travels no farther than the local dump: and yet, like Homer’s hero or these great explorers, he continually finds a universe “not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
As an added feature, this volume presents a selection of Eiseley’s uncollected prose, including early autobiographical sketches, vivid and haunting entries from his private notebooks, and his 1957 lecture “Neanderthal Man and the Dawn of Human Paleontology.”
528 pages, Hardcover
Published November 15, 2016
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163 people want to read
About the author
Loren Eiseley
50 books314 followersLoren Corey Eiseley (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was a highly respected anthropologist, science writer, ecologist, and poet. He published books of essays, biography, and general science in the 1950s through the 1970s.
Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.
Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 1, 2023
The first of two volumes of Loren Eiseley's collected essays, as compiled by the Library of America. This first volume is composed of 4 chronologically published books: The Immense Journey, The Firmament of Time, The Unexpected Universe, and Uncollected Prose.
Randomly picked from my Capitol Bookstore stash, I read my battered copy of The Immense Journey almost a decade ago, and I gave it 5 stars and an effusive review. It was The Snout which made quite an impact on me then, I had this paragraph painted on driftwood: "It gives one a feeling of confidence to see nature still busy with experiments, still dynamic, and not through nor satisfied because a Devonian fish managed to end as a two-legged character with a straw hat." He spoke of that analogous creature of my childhood, and the creature that epitomizes the passage of evolution as we understand it: the mudskipper.
Unbelievably, I seem to have coasted through the most precious essay of all, back then: The Judgment of the Birds left me in a puddle of tears, but welcome tears, and grasping to identify the gamut of emotions welled up in my chest. Eiseley's writing felt like I was there, in that mountain glade, dust motes swirling in the shaft of sunlight as birds passed judgment, and hope, on nature. The imagery is so powerful, the emotional effect so potent and sublime that many years from now, when my memories are going through "a wheel within a wheel," my Alzheimeric self will claim that beatific moment as my own.
Of course, after The Judgment of the Birds, the succeeding essays now paled in comparison. Apart from The Angry Winter, which is filed under The Unexpected Universe, Eiseley's third book. The essay starts off with a story of his benevolent shepherd Wolf's eerie and inexplicable reaction to a bison's fossilized leg bone. Suffice to say that the dog's unnatural, midnight response to an ancient bone would only make sense if you believed in the supernatural--science had nothing on this, and to his credit, Eiseley does not pursue that angle, and let this reader draw her own conclusions. Conclusions which I think reflect his own!
Having absorbed Eiseley's beautiful prose and anecdotal insights ("I am not nearly so interested in what monkey man was derived from as I am in what kind of monkey he is to become.") on a variety of subjects, it was natural to be intrigued by such a learned, sensitive soul. So I was pleased to read a chronology of his life, followed by a Note on the Texts. The trajectory of his life's fascination-turned-obsession with nature and history started early, and the struggles which earned him eminence as a professor and lecturer were made possible by a generous uncle and the good fortune of choosing a supportive wife. This good fortune extended to his eventual choice of editors, when he locked ideas with Random House's editor-in-chief Hiram Hadyn, who found The Judgment of the Birds "the most beautiful piece of writing I have read in several years." May I just add to that: and in the years to come. To anyone who has never looked at the stars without some sense of wonder, this one's for you.
The Judgment of the Birds by Loren Eiseley
I have said that I saw a judgment upon life, and that it was not passed by men. Those who stare at birds in cages or who test minds by their closeness to our own may not care for it. It comes from far away out of my past, in a place of pouring waters and green leaves. I shall never see an episode like it again if I live to be a hundred, nor do I think that one man in a million has ever seen it, because man is an intruder into such silences. The light must be right, and the observer must remain unseen. No man sets up such an experiment. What he sees, he sees by chance.
You may put it that I had come over a mountain, that I had slogged through fern and pine needles for half a long day, and that on the edge of a little glade with one long, crooked branch extending across it, I had sat down to rest with my back against a stump. Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although I could see into it perfectly.
The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.
The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling's parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing. The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment and sat still. Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern. But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.
No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death.
And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.
The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged. For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence. There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten.Till suddenly they took heart and sang, from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing.They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful.They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death.
Randomly picked from my Capitol Bookstore stash, I read my battered copy of The Immense Journey almost a decade ago, and I gave it 5 stars and an effusive review. It was The Snout which made quite an impact on me then, I had this paragraph painted on driftwood: "It gives one a feeling of confidence to see nature still busy with experiments, still dynamic, and not through nor satisfied because a Devonian fish managed to end as a two-legged character with a straw hat." He spoke of that analogous creature of my childhood, and the creature that epitomizes the passage of evolution as we understand it: the mudskipper.
Unbelievably, I seem to have coasted through the most precious essay of all, back then: The Judgment of the Birds left me in a puddle of tears, but welcome tears, and grasping to identify the gamut of emotions welled up in my chest. Eiseley's writing felt like I was there, in that mountain glade, dust motes swirling in the shaft of sunlight as birds passed judgment, and hope, on nature. The imagery is so powerful, the emotional effect so potent and sublime that many years from now, when my memories are going through "a wheel within a wheel," my Alzheimeric self will claim that beatific moment as my own.
Of course, after The Judgment of the Birds, the succeeding essays now paled in comparison. Apart from The Angry Winter, which is filed under The Unexpected Universe, Eiseley's third book. The essay starts off with a story of his benevolent shepherd Wolf's eerie and inexplicable reaction to a bison's fossilized leg bone. Suffice to say that the dog's unnatural, midnight response to an ancient bone would only make sense if you believed in the supernatural--science had nothing on this, and to his credit, Eiseley does not pursue that angle, and let this reader draw her own conclusions. Conclusions which I think reflect his own!
Having absorbed Eiseley's beautiful prose and anecdotal insights ("I am not nearly so interested in what monkey man was derived from as I am in what kind of monkey he is to become.") on a variety of subjects, it was natural to be intrigued by such a learned, sensitive soul. So I was pleased to read a chronology of his life, followed by a Note on the Texts. The trajectory of his life's fascination-turned-obsession with nature and history started early, and the struggles which earned him eminence as a professor and lecturer were made possible by a generous uncle and the good fortune of choosing a supportive wife. This good fortune extended to his eventual choice of editors, when he locked ideas with Random House's editor-in-chief Hiram Hadyn, who found The Judgment of the Birds "the most beautiful piece of writing I have read in several years." May I just add to that: and in the years to come. To anyone who has never looked at the stars without some sense of wonder, this one's for you.
The Judgment of the Birds by Loren Eiseley
I have said that I saw a judgment upon life, and that it was not passed by men. Those who stare at birds in cages or who test minds by their closeness to our own may not care for it. It comes from far away out of my past, in a place of pouring waters and green leaves. I shall never see an episode like it again if I live to be a hundred, nor do I think that one man in a million has ever seen it, because man is an intruder into such silences. The light must be right, and the observer must remain unseen. No man sets up such an experiment. What he sees, he sees by chance.
You may put it that I had come over a mountain, that I had slogged through fern and pine needles for half a long day, and that on the edge of a little glade with one long, crooked branch extending across it, I had sat down to rest with my back against a stump. Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although I could see into it perfectly.
The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.
The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling's parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing. The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment and sat still. Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern. But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.
No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death.
And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.
The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged. For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence. There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten.Till suddenly they took heart and sang, from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing.They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful.They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death.
September 26, 2017
It's been a while since I read The Immense Journey. It's still one of my favorite books. Reading Eiseley engenders in me a sense of deep time, vast distance, and cosmic space; a sense of eternity and purpose and, dare I say it, hope.
May 7, 2020
I have nothing but superlatives for Dr. Eiseley's writing. He writes beautifully on natural history, and includes his opinions about man's place in the world. As he was professor at the University of Pennsylvania, his writing is well researched. Although this essay collection is 500 pages, about 50 pages are notes and references. His essays should be used in writing classes in demonstrating the art of essay writing.
February 16, 2021
I love the writing of Loren Eiseley, his depth of understanding and breadth of scholarship. As with everything I’ve read by him one is continuously made to wonder at the natural world, the natural universe as you wander through the immensity of time with him as your guide. I loved the progress of the essays in “The Firmament of Time” where he presents a succinct history of how scientists came to understand the age of the earth, the process of evolution, and the coming of Homo sapiens, followed by more introspective, tentative and speculative philosophical essays regarding the future, humankind, and Nature. It is the most cohesive of the three books. I loved “The Unexpected Universe.” “The Star Thrower” and “The Innocent Fox” were quite familiar from years ago when I’d read them, but seemed fresh, somehow more melancholy and more joyful than I had remembered. Reading all of these essays together gave me a better impression of Eiseley. I also loved his meditations on the impossibility of writing science with a humanist or personal perspective. I love the Library of America editions, but was a little disappointed in the footnotes and biographical timeline in this one- admittedly a high bar being set in other volumes I’ve read. Eiseley is rich in references, and many of these were not illuminated in the notes. Overall, highly recommended.
September 28, 2020
I came across Eisley for the first time in Wright Morris's autobiography. They were fellow Nebraskans who met in the suburbs of Philadelphia when Eisley was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. Eisley was an outstanding paleontologist who also happened to be a deep thinker and a great writer. In these essays, he thinks deeply about what modern science, including his own paleological studies, tells us about the meaning and purpose of human life. While the writing is superb, it is Eisley's fundamental humanity and moral decency that strikes the most resonant chord for me. But perhaps that is because of the perilous times we are now living through.
November 22, 2020
There are definitely some interesting ideas in this book. If you like those ideas presented with a lot of philosophy and poetry, it's likely the book for you, but it's not the book for me. I also found it grated how often Eiseley used "man" to mean "person" or "mankind," although his use of the terms "savage" or "primitive" was much more unpleasant.
The Immense Journey: 2.5 stars. The most fascinating essay was a reaction to the Piltdown hoax, written shortly after it was revealed to be a fraud. My paleontology background is mostly from the '80s and '90s, and while the other information in this collection was interesting, it did really seem dated... and I expect is much more so to someone who is current on research in the field.
The Firmament of Time: 1.5 stars.
The Unexpected Universe: 1 star.
Uncollected Prose: 2.5 stars. The unexpected and curious entries here were from the time he spent as a hobo.
Chronology: 3 stars. Yup, I found the timeline of Eiseley's life to be more interesting than what he wrote. Apologies to those who love this book.
The Immense Journey: 2.5 stars. The most fascinating essay was a reaction to the Piltdown hoax, written shortly after it was revealed to be a fraud. My paleontology background is mostly from the '80s and '90s, and while the other information in this collection was interesting, it did really seem dated... and I expect is much more so to someone who is current on research in the field.
The Firmament of Time: 1.5 stars.
The Unexpected Universe: 1 star.
Uncollected Prose: 2.5 stars. The unexpected and curious entries here were from the time he spent as a hobo.
Chronology: 3 stars. Yup, I found the timeline of Eiseley's life to be more interesting than what he wrote. Apologies to those who love this book.
August 31, 2025
Reading Loren Eiseley for the first time set the trajectory of my life. I knew I wanted to become a generalist. I wanted to know a little something about everything, and to be present in all the moments of my life when I crossed paths with my fellow Earthlings; not just the human ones, but the bugs and bears, birds and bees, dews and frosts, lightnings and clouds, green things upon the earth, including poisonous plants that give me rashes and the radishes that d0n't but that sting my tongue, lettuces and the things that look enticing but that something tells me, "Lettuce not eat that;" snakes (of which I'm scared) and spiders (of which I'm not), dogs, cats, and other domesticated species; family members; bad neighbors; good friends; dear hearts and gentle people. Let me say that if you've been contemplating reading these essays but think they'll be time-consuming and perhaps not as readily accessible as you'd hoped, take a leap of faith. Your mind will thank you.
August 28, 2022
I was unfamiliar with this author, but I picked this volume up because LOA is generally reliable, and I'm interested in science writing. But I found Eiseley to be basically unreadable. He strives mightily for a poetic effect, but all he ends up with is tortured writing that is almost a parody of itself:
The skull lay tilted in such a manner that it stared, sightless, up at me as though I, too, were already caught a few feet above him in the strata and, in my turn, were staring upward at that strip of sky which the ages were carrying farther away from me beneath the tumbling debris of falling mountains. The creature had never lived to see a man, and I, what was it I was never going to see?Was this guy being paid by the word? Was he trying to win the Bulwer-Lytton prize?
August 1, 2023
I read, then re read, then implored several friends to read: The Brown Wasps. It was the perfect entry point into Loren Eisely, showcasing his talent for merging poetry and deep science in essay form. I am drawn to the undercurrent of melancholy that flows through his work. His writing is not always accessible, it reads more like scripture. A scientific scripture. There is a central mystery to pieces like “The Ghost Continent” and “How Flowers Changed The World” and I will return to these for many years to come. I am grateful to Philip Lopate for highlighting the paleontologist poet in The Great American Essays. A fine writer that have only just discovered.
October 5, 2019
Eiseley is beautiful. Read his works. You won't be disappointed.
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January 27, 2017500 E361 2016
April 6, 2025
An inspirational human.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews