The Labyrinth: God, Darwin, and the Meaning of Life - Hardcover

Philip Appleman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, where he was a founding editor of Victorian Studies. He is the author of a book on overpopulation, The Silent Explosion and coeditor of 1859: Entering an Age of Crisis. He has also published three novels and several volumes of poetry.

“I came across Philip Appleman’s essay The Labyrinth at a difficult moment in my life and work, when I seemed to be groping from one maze to another only to find that each led to a minotaur of complexity and conflict. The dissonance in my head threatened to burst it apart. Philip’s calm and wise counsel in these few but riveting pages became my Ariadne’s Thread. I had been looking for the meaning of these things―of complexity, conflict, and life itself―in the wrong places. If you’re in doubt about where to find such meaning, take up the thread and come along. It leads to a most surprising place.”
- Bill Moyers

“Here’s the thing about Philip Appleman: His writing makes you think. A lot. But this is a good thing because when you’re reading Appleman, you’re rewarded with the grace of a poet, the incisiveness of a scientist, and the heft of a philosopher. With Appleman as your guide, thinking deep thoughts never felt so good.”
- Rob Boston, Director of Communications, Americans United for Separation of Church and State

“Philip Appleman decrees: Let there be Enlightenment. And it is good. The Labyrinth is rife with insights into the meaning of life and the reckoning with death, by one of today’s wisest and most elegant writers and thinkers. Appleman fearlessly wrestles with religion, and reality wins. Beautifully written, reasoned and true, every paragraph studded with secular epiphanies, each page elicits a frisson of appreciation for Appleman’s acumen. Appleman untangles the knotty riddles of existence, evolution, human neurosis, and religion with searing logic tempered, always, by empathy.”
- Annie Laurie Gaylor, Co-founder and Co-president, Freedom from Religion Foundation

“In the face of greatness, one should not mince words. Philip Appleman’s The Labyrinth is one of the most soaring, eloquent, and resoundingly humane essays I have ever been offered the privilege of publishing.”
- Tom Flynn, editor, Free Inquiry

“In The Labyrinth, poet, novelist and science writer Philip Appleman distills into one short, delightful, beautifully written book vast libraries of wisdom, history, science, ethics, and philosophy. The Labyrinth puts Appleman in the distinguished company of fellow Midwesterners Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce.”
- Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

“It would be wonderful if “The Labyrinth” could be put in book form―a small beautifully bound book―it would be my bible to keep on my night table, and I would want to give copies to family and friends.”
- Anne Sager, poet and photographer