(William James, popularizer of pragmatism, with his good friend and intellectual antagonist, Josiah Royce, in 1903.)

Fruits Not Roots: A Glance at America’s Greatest (or at Least Top-3) Philosopher

By the end of Robert D. Richardson Jr.’s William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (2007), I found myself underlining entire paragraphs, writing “Yes!” on every other page, in an absolutely satisfying, intellectual climax.

Richardson uses William James’ works to walk us through the mind of one of America’s most…