La firma de todas las cosas / The Signature of All Things (Paperback)

Paperback. Todas las cosas pueden clasificarse y etiquetarse, excepto un espiritu aventurero. Una maravillosa novela de la autora de Come, reza, ama. 5 de enero de 1800En los albores de un nuevo siglo, en un invierno caracteristico de Filadelfia, nace Alma Whittaker. Su padre, Henry Whittaker, es un explorador botanico audaz y carismatico cuya vasta fortuna oculta unos origenes humildes: comenzo de pilluelo en los jardines Kew de Sir Joseph Banks y de grumete a bordo del Resolution del capitan Cook. La madre de Alma, una estricta holandesa de buena familia, sabe tanto de botanica como cualquier hombre. Nina independiente, con una sed de conocimientos insaciable, Alma no tarda en adentrarse en el mundo de las plantas y de la ciencia. Sin embargo, a medida que el minucioso estudio de los musgos la acerca mas y mas a los misterios de la evolucion, el hombre al que ama la arrastra en la direccion opuesta: al mundo de lo espiritual, lo divino y lo magico. Ella es una cientifica de mente despejada; el es un artista utopico. Pero lo que une a esta pareja es la pasion compartida por el saber: el desesperado deseo de comprender como funciona el mundo, de que estan hechos los mecanismos de la vida. La firma de todas las cosas es una novela grandiosa que narra la historia de un siglo grandioso. Recorre todo el mundo, desde Londres hasta Peru, Filadelfia, Tahiti o Amsterdam. Habitada por personajes extraordinarios (misioneros, abolicionistas, aventureros, astronomos, capitanes de mar, genios y locos), cuenta, por encima de todo, con una heroina inolvidable: Alma Whittaker, una mujer de la Ilustracion que se yergue desafiante en la cuspide de la era moderna.ENGLISH DESCRIPTIONA glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic, and City of Girls. In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittakera poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henrys brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her fathers money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. As Almas research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite directioninto the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artistbut what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life. Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globefrom London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond. Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, whoborn in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolutionbears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas. Written in the bold, qu Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…