CHRISTOPH IRMSCHER
Author and Critic

Recent Works

The Poetics of Natural History. New edition with photographs by Rosamond Purcell

"Well-known and influential ... powerful." H-Environment Reviews

Stephen Spender, Poems Written Abroad

“An event.”
Massimo Bacigalupo

Friedrich Gerstäcker, The Arkansas Regulators

Translated by Charles Adams and Christoph Irmscher

Max Eastman: A Life

"A shrewd, important, and revealing portrait of the ever-unrepentant Eastman." Jill Lepore

Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science

"Masterful."
Booklist, Starred review

Louis Agassiz, Introduction to the Study of Natural History

"Insightful."
James Hanken,
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University

Reconsidering Longfellow

"An eye-opening collection."
Charles Calhoun

A Keener Perception: Ecocritical Studies in American Art History

"Rich enough to repay multiple readings.”
ISLE

Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200

"Essential."
Choice

Longfellow Redux

"Longfellow lives again."
Times Literary Supplement

John James Audubon:
Writings and Drawings

"A marvelous work."
Library Journal

The Poetics of Natural History

Winner of the Literature and Language Award, AAP

Public Poet, Private Man: Web Exhibit

Winner of the 2009 Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab Award, American Library Association

Music for the Worms: Darwin at the Lilly Library

A Darwin Bicentennial Exhibit, with many illustrations from the Darwin holdings of the Lilly Library.

Matthew Pearl and Christoph Irmscher on Louis Agassiz

On November 6, 2014, The Cambridge Roundtable on Science & Religion hosted an evening of dinner and discussion at the Harvard Faculty Club, Wednesday November 6th, 6:00 PM, featuring New York Times Bestselling Author and 2013 Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction winner Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club and The Technologists, and me. Here are our conluding words on Louis Agassiz.

New York Times Podcast on Christoph's “Louis Agassiz”

Christoph interviewed by Sam Tanenhaus.

"When Modern Men Became Feminists"

Christoph in a panel discussion with Gail Collins of the New York Times and Brooke Kroeger, NYU Center for the Humanities, November 2017.

Interview with Heather Goldstone on WCAI's Living Lab

Science Book A Day Interviews Christoph Irmscher

Interview with the Bookmonger about Max Eastman

John Miller interviews Christoph about Max Eastman's complicated relationship with National Review.

Christoph Irmscher about Louis Agassiz on Radio Boston

Gallery

Photograph by Lauren Bernofsky

At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (photograph: Lauren Bernofsky).

Author lecturing at Wonderlab, June 2022.

Photograph by Sandee Milhouse

Photograph by James Brosher

Christoph Irmscher and Yvette Eastman. Photograph by Breon Mitchell

As Majordomo in IUOT's production of Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, 2018