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La firma de todas las cosas (Spanish Edition)
La firma de todas las cosas - Spanish Edition Author:Elizabeth Gilbert En los albores de un nuevo siglo, en un invierno característico de Filadelfia, nace Alma Whittaker. Su padre, Henry Whittaker, es un explorador botánico audaz y carismático cuya vasta fortuna oculta unos orígenes humildes: comenzó de pilluelo en los jardines Kew de Sir Joseph Banks y de grumete a bordo del Resolution del capitán Cook. La madre d... more »e Alma, una estricta holandesa de buena familia, sabe tanto de botánica como cualquier hombre. Niña 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 más y más a los misterios de la evolución, el hombre al que ama la arrastra en la dirección opuesta: al mundo de lo espiritual, lo divino y lo mágico. Ella es una científica de mente despejada; él es un artista utópico. Pero lo que une a esta pareja es la pasión compartida por el saber: el desesperado deseo de comprender cómo funciona el mundo, de qué están 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 Perú, Filadelfia, Tahití o Ámsterdam. Habitada por personajes extraordinarios (misioneros, abolicionistas, aventureros, astrónomos, capitanes de mar, genios y locos), cuenta, por encima de todo, con una heroína inolvidable: Alma Whittaker, una mujer de la Ilustración que se yergue desafiante en la cúspide de la era moderna. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION:A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed 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 Whittaker a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry s brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father s money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. As Alma s 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 direction into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist but 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 globe from 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, who born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution bears 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, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert s wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.« less