About this title: Four stories and two novellas, most of them oriented toward the sciences--Andrea Barrett's specialty--and several of them interconnected. Titles include "Theories of Rain" and "The Mysteries of Ubiquitin." The title novella is a strange, detailed account of a mathematician in India in the 1860s who is part of a project to map the Himalayas, consisting of both his letters home to his wife and his much franker narrative that she will never see. In this collection, Barrett brings back characters from previous stories, including the sisters Rose and Bianca. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 02/2002
ISBN-13:9780393043488ISBN:0393043487
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 320 p. Contains: Illustrations. Ex-Library expected imperfections. read more
Edition: First Edition, Ex-Library
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton Co
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780393043488ISBN:0393043487
Description: Very good. Great book! Mild shelf wear on dj, library stamp on edge. Amazon: No one limns the opposing pull of inner and outer worlds more eloquently than Andrea Barrett. Her naturalists, explorers, scientists, and healers are driven to work and above all to know; they categorize, theorize, and collect the phenomena of. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2002-02
ISBN-13:9780393043488ISBN:0393043487
Description: Like New. Like new hardcover with DJ. Dust jacket shows very minor shelf wear, otherwise an unblemished copy.; 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! Free Delivery Confirmation! Ships same or next business day! read more
Description: Very Good. 0393043487 * HCDJ * SHIPPING WITHIN 24 HOURS! ** QUESTIONS ANSWERED QUICKLY ** THANKS ** EX LIBRARY BOOK** HARDCOVER BOOK WITH DUST JACKET. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. [ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: NONE ] [ Writing: NONE ] [ Torn pages: NO ] [ Broken Seams: NO ] Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub Date: 2/1/2002 Binding: Hardcover Pages: 320. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Binding is slightly damaged and/or book has some loose pages. No missing pages. Back Pages Ripped Out, Novel Intact Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Edition: 1st edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2002-02
ISBN-13:9780393043488ISBN:0393043487
Description: Like New. May be shiny, in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, no damage to binding, may have a remainder mark. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co
Date Published: 2003-02
ISBN-13:9780393323573ISBN:0393323579
Description: Like New. May be shiny, in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, no damage to binding, may have a remainder mark. read more
Description: Good. 0393323579 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
"I stumbled on Andrea Barrett in one of the America's Best Short Stories anthologies some years back. Her title story, Servants of the Map, was an elegant historical fiction tale about a man (German? Swedish? I forget) who goes off on a scientific expedition and writes letters back to his family who have not seen him for a long time. Barrett weaves very intelligent stories about (mis)adventure in the pursuit of science--not a topic I'm normally hooked by, but you end up giving in to the fascination of the subject, both for yourself and for the characters who become obsessed by it. Servants of the Map: Stories expands on this theme and also links this big world of characters she has created. Any book you read by her, including The Voyage of the Narwhal, Ship Fever, or her new one The Air We Breathe, will bring in familiar characters from the other books and what's delightful is that you will probably need to read Barrett's entire body of work--especially those wonderful books yet to be written--to see how everyone, in fact, connects.
Andrea Barrett isn't as well known as Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Alice Hoffman, but she's in their league and she's an excellent read."
"Excellent, yet complex, fictional account of the evolution of the scientific consciousness from the 19th century amateurs various perspectives of science to the late 20th century of the mandarin class of academic professionals. The tangential weaving of the familial lineages and friendships over the centuries, and the metaphysical quality of inherited curiosity, is a provocative authorial perspective. The book left me with a new a curiosity about the philosophy of science and how the positivist perspective about the world."
"I found this book more satisfying than Ship Fever, which won a National Book Award... perhaps because it resurrected characters from that book and added richness and context to their personal histories. I'm a fan of that sort of serialization -- "elliptical family sagas", I guess you'd call them -- having been a long-time reader of Louise Erdrich, a big fan of "Winesburg, Ohio", and before that, a devotee of Stephen King and all his many interconnected Castle Rock and Derry residents.
This is a great, satisfying read for anyone interested in naturalism, the history of science and exploration, and 19th century U.S. history. Finding and reading it was a nice little bit of synchronicity for me, personally, since one of its longest stories, "The Cure", is set in the Adirondacks; and I found the book after a summer in the foothills of the Catskills, a drive north through the Adirondacks, a ferry ride across Lake Champlain, and a visit to a used bookstore in Burlington, VT.
One last note: "Servants of the Map", and Barrett's Afterword describing its genesis and the ever-extending family tree she's drawn to map out her characters' connections, makes me want to put all my months of genealogy research into my own family to good use. She's helped me recognize the wealth of writing riches I have in my own back yard. Thank you, Ms. Barrett!"
"interconnected stories about a few families, stretching in time from 1860's to early 1900's, from london, ireland, northern kingdom, black hills of south dakota, kashmir. she's a great writer and incorporates science with beautiful prose. andrea barrett won national book award fiction in 1996 for "ship fever""
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