'I like not the man who is thinking how to be good,' Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, 'but the man thinking how to accomplish his work'. The ethical emphasis on work and activity signals the shift in his thinking that is the subject of Emerson and the Conduct of Life. In this book, David M. Robinson describes Emerson's evolution from mystic to pragmatist and shows the importance of Emerson's undervalued later writing. Emerson's reputation has rested on...