William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. By Robert D. Richardson

Excerpt

Robert D. Richardson has written a formidable yet highly readable biography of one of the central figures in American cultural and intellectual history, the philosopher and psychologist William James. James was originally trained as an experimentalist in science and took a medical degree at Harvard though he never practiced medicine. He had demonstrable talent in the visual arts along with an insatiable curiosity about experience of all sorts. Born in 1842 into one of the most famous and idiosyncratic of families, he had the benefit and burden of having grown up at a wide variety of sites in America and Europe. He was beset with life long medical problems of both a psychosomatic and organic character including a protracted heart ailment that finally caused his death in 1910. He endured what would probably be called from a contemporary perspective several recurring bouts of clinical depression. It would be fair to say that his capacity for resilience and learning from even the most harrowing of these experiences enriched immeasurably both his philosophical and psychological work. …