Maggie's Farm

A new bio of the remarkable, irrepressible William James is out. Quote from review in the Boston Globe:

In "William James," Robert Richardson, whose previous subjects were Thoreau and Emerson, seeks to understand James's "life through his work, not the other way around." Richardson presents no new interpretations of James's theories of pragmatism and pluralism. Nor does he attempt to critique them. But he has a knack for explaining complex ideas clearly and elegantly and for bringing to life a fascinating character. Various William Jameses, Richardson suggests, lived inside the man: As he willed himself into optimism, he was often sad, irritable, and depressed. But the "central" or "essential" James was an apostle of activity, spontaneity, doubt, chance, and chaos, "astonishingly, even alarmingly open to new experiences," including a headlong plunge into the maelstrom of American modernism.

The whole thing is here.  Image: Henry and brother William (on right) James. Two brothers could hardly be more different in temperament. Henry was "an old lady," and William a wild and crazy, drug-abusing, skirt-chasing dude.