It’s not hard to imagine Edgar Allan Poe as obsessive. Consider his passionate poetry, his tales of horror barely tapping reality --not to mention his personal life: his ardent marriage to his cousin and his baffling death on the streets of Baltimore. But manic about SCIENCE?

In his new biography, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science, historian John Tresch shows us a Poe who led his class at West Point in engineering and math, wrote about scientific discoveries and plunged into debates about evolution and the origin of the universe -- in an age when the line between science and quackery was a blur.

Links to virtual events: Harvard Bookstore June 18, Fountain Bookstore June 23, Ivy Bookshop June 29.

Do you have a question or comment about a show or a story idea to pitch? Contact On the Record at: Senior Supervising Producer, Maureen Harvie she/her/hers [email protected] 410-235-1903 Senior Producer, Melissa Gerr she/her/hers [email protected] 410-235-1157 Producer Sam Bermas-Dawes he/him/his [email protected] 410-235-1472