But what he does is a lot harder than it looks.” Or as Eiseley himself contends, “Mere words can sometimes be more penetrating probes into the nature of the universe than any instrument wielded in a laboratory. The Invisible Pyramid: A Library of America eBook Classic eBook : Eiseley, Loren, Cronon, William: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store. “Because he writes so frequently of wondrous encounters that surface at the most ordinary and unexpected moments, you’d think he’d have a fair number of imitators. “There remains something sui generis about Eiseley,” says William Cronon.

How they ended up in their homes is the subject of his essay, “Barbed Wire and Brown Skulls,” which we present here, in full, as our Story of the Week selection.Įiseley often moaned about his lack of luck finding the prehistoric fossil that would make his name in the field, but he did discover something quite remarkable: an idiosyncratic and inimitable style of writing. “My wife’s friends are constantly being startled by the skulls which glare down at them from the top of one of my book cases!” An anthropologist, archaeologist, and self-described “bone hunter,” Loren Eiseley accumulated quite a collection of human remains over the course of his career-some of them provided by complete strangers who just wanted them out of the house. Weekend reading: Loren Eiseley sees dead people. (Photo by Bernie Cleff courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Archives and Records Center) Loren Eiseley, “Barbed Wire and Brown Skulls”įrom Loren Eiseley: Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos Loren Eiseley in his office at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, May 12, 1960.

Loren eiseley library of america