Download or read book Henry Adams Selected Letters written by Henry Adams and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ernest Samuels's Pulitzer Prize-winning, multi-volume work on Henry Adams is now a compact, updated, one-volume biography. Henry Adams has been called an indispensable figure in American thought. Although he famously "took his own life" in the autobiographical Education of Henry Adams, his letters--more intimate and unbuttoned, though hardly unselfconscious--are themselves indispensable for an understanding of the man and his times. This selection, the first based on the authoritative 6-volume Letters, represents every major private and public event in Adams's life from 1858 to 1918 and confirms his reputation as one of the greatest letter writers of his time. Adams knew everyone who was anyone and went almost everywhere, and--true to the Adams family tradition--recorded it all. These letters to an array of correspondents from American presidents to Henry James to 5-year-old honorary nieces reveal Adams's passion for politics and disdain for politicians, his snobbish delight in society and sincere affection for friends, his pose of dilettantism and his serious ambitions as writer and historian, his devastation at his wife's suicide and his acquiescence in the role of Elizabeth Cameron's "tame cat," his wicked humor at others' expense and his own reflexive self-depreciation. This volume allows the reader to experience 19th-century America through the eyes of an observer on whom very little was lost, and to make the acquaintance of one of the more interesting personalities in American letters. As Ernest Samuels says in his introduction, "The letters lift the veil of old-age disenchantment that obscures the Education and exhibit Adams as perhaps the most brilliant letter writer of his time. What most engages one in the long course of his correspondence is the tireless range of his intellectual curiosity, his passionate effort to understand the politics, the science, and the human society of the world as it changed around him... It is as literature of a high order that his letters can finally be read."

Download or read book The Letters of Henry Adams written by Henry Adams and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 910 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book First of Hearts written by Ward Thorton and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2011 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Selected Letters of Henry Adams written by Henry Adams and published by . This book was released on 1951 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry Adams has been called an indispensable figure in American thought. Although he famously "took his own life" in the autobiographical Education of Henry Adams, his letters--more intimate and unbuttoned, though hardly unselfconscious--are themselves indispensable for an understanding of the man and his times. This selection represents every major private and public event in Adams's life from 1858 to 1918 and confirms his reputation as one of the greatest letter writers of his time. Adams knew everyone who was anyone and went almost everywhere, and--true to the Adams family tradition--recorded it all. These letters to an array of correspondents reveal Adams's passion for politics and disdain for politicians, his snobbish delight in society and sincere affection for friends, his pose of dilettantism and his serious ambitions as writer and historian, his devastation at his wife's suicide and his acquiescence in the role of Elizabeth Cameron's "tame cat," his wicked humor at others' expense and his own reflexive self-depreciation. This volume allows the reader to experience 19th-century America through the eyes of an observer on whom very little was lost, and to make the acquaintance of one of the more interesting personalities in American letters. What most engages one in the long course of his correspondence is the tireless range of his intellectual curiosity, his passionate effort to understand the politics, the science, and the human society of the world as it changed around him... It is as literature of a high order that his letters can finally be read.

Download or read book The Selected Letters of Henry Adams written by Henry Adams and published by . This book was released on 1951 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Last American Aristocrat written by David S. Brown and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “marvelous…compelling” (The New York Times Book Review) biography of literary icon Henry Adams—one of America’s most prominent writers and intellectuals, who witnessed and contributed to the United States’ dramatic transition from a colonial society to a modern nation. Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. His autobiography and modern classic The Education of Henry Adams was widely considered one of the best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. The last member of his distinguished family—after great-grandfather John Adams, and grandfather John Quincy Adams—to gain national attention, he is remembered today as an historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist. Now, historian David Brown sheds light on the brilliant yet under-celebrated life of this major American intellectual. Adams not only lived through the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution but he met Abraham Lincoln, bowed before Queen Victoria, and counted Secretary of State John Hay, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and President Theodore Roosevelt as friends and neighbors. His observations of these powerful men and their policies in his private letters provide a penetrating assessment of Gilded Age America on the cusp of the modern era. “Thoroughly researched and gracefully written” (The Wall Street Journal), The Last American Aristocrat details Adams’s relationships with his wife (Marian “Clover” Hooper) and, following her suicide, Elizabeth Cameron, the young wife of a senator and part of the famous Sherman clan from Ohio. Henry Adams’s letters—thousands of them—demonstrate his struggles with depression, familial expectations, and reconciling with his unwanted widower’s existence. Offering a fresh window on nineteenth century US history, as well as a more “modern” and “human” Henry Adams than ever before, The Last American Aristocrat is a “standout portrait of the man and his era” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Download or read book The Education of Henry Adams written by Henry Adams and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2022-10-04T17:27:17Z with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most well-known and influential autobiographies ever written, The Education of Henry Adams is told in the third person, as if its author were watching his own life unwind. It begins with his early life in Quincy, the family seat outside of Boston, and soon moves on to primary school, Harvard College, and beyond. He learns about the unpredictability of politics from statesmen and diplomats, and the newest discoveries in technology, science, history, and art from some of the most important thinkers and creators of the day. In essentially every case, Adams claims, his education and upbringing let him down, leaving him in the dark. But as the historian David S. Brown puts it, this is a “charade”: The Education’s “greatest irony is its claim to telling the story of its author’s ignorance, confusion, and misdirection.” Instead, Adams uses its “vigorous prose and confident assertions” to attack “the West after 1400.” For instance, industrialization and technology make Adams wonder “whether the American people knew where they were driving.” And in one famous chapter, “The Dynamo and the Virgin,” he contrasts the rise of electricity and the power it brings with the strength and resilience of religious belief in the Middle Ages. The grandson and great-grandson of two presidents and the son of a politician and diplomat who served under Lincoln as minister to Great Britain, Adams was born into immense privilege, as he knew well: “Probably no child, born in the year, held better cards than he.” After growing up a Boston Brahmin, he worked as a journalist, historian, and professor, moving in early middle age to Washington. Although Adams distributed a privately printed edition of a hundred copies of The Education for friends and family in 1907, it wasn’t published more widely until 1918, the year he died. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1919, and in 1999 a Modern Library panel placed it first on its list of the best nonfiction books published in the twentieth century. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Download or read book Democracy written by Henry Adams and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published anonymously, it was later revealed that this classic work of political fiction was penned by Henry Brooks Adams, the renowned essayist and journalist best known for the autobiography The Education of Henry Adams. Though fictionalized, Democracy: An American Novel offers a gripping account of the vagaries and vicissitudes of political power that still rings true more than a century after it was first published.

Download or read book Henry Adams and the Making of America written by Garry Wills and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2007-08 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author Wills showcases Henry Adams little-known but seminal studyof the early United States, and draws from it fresh insights on the paradoxesthat roil America to this day.

Download or read book First of Hearts written by Cokie Roberts and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2011-09-19 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Congress bumbles on. Everybody laughs at its assumed spasms of virtue, no one is deceived by any reform pretenses". Clover Adams's political commentary in 1883 could serve as the lead of a legislative story today- that's one reason why it's so much fun to read her mail. ...What's striking here is how open the political scene was to women. Historians tend to insist that women occupied no political space before suffrage, or more commonly, they ignore women altogether... But Mrs. Henry Adams quickly assumed influential womanhood in Washington. As he was leaving his post as Secretary of the Interior, the Adams's old friend Carl Shurz brought her his report on Indian affairs, which she deemed "worth reading".

Download or read book Letters of Mrs Adams written by Abigail Adams and published by . This book was released on 1840 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book My Dearest Friend written by Abigail Adams and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A wonderfully vivid account of the momentous era they lived through, underscoring the chaotic, often improvisatory circumstances that attended the birth of the fledgling nation and the hardships of daily life.” —Michiko Kakutani, New York Times In 1762, John Adams penned a flirtatious note to “Miss Adorable,” the 17-year-old Abigail Smith. In 1801, Abigail wrote to wish her husband John a safe journey as he headed home to Quincy after serving as president of the nation he helped create. The letters that span these nearly forty years form the most significant correspondence—and reveal one of the most intriguing and inspiring partnerships—in American history. As a pivotal player in the American Revolution and the early republic, John had a front-row seat at critical moments in the creation of the United States, from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to negotiating peace with Great Britain to serving as the first vice president and second president under the U.S. Constitution. Separated more often than they were together during this founding era, John and Abigail shared their lives through letters that each addressed to “My Dearest Friend,” debating ideas and commenting on current events while attending to the concerns of raising their children (including a future president). Full of keen observations and articulate commentary on world events, these letters are also remarkably intimate. This new collection—including some letters never before published—invites readers to experience the founding of a nation and the partnership of two strong individuals, in their own words. This is history at its most authentic and most engaging.

Download or read book Descent from Glory written by Paul C. Nagel and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has never been any doubt that the Adams family was America's first family in our politics and memory. This research-based and insightful book is a multigenerational biography of that family from the founder father John through the mordant writer Brooks.

Download or read book The Havamal The Sayings of Odin the Wise One written by Anon E Mouse and published by Abela Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THERE existed from very early times a collection of Norse proverbs and wise counsels, which were attributed to Odin (Othin) just as the Biblical proverbs were to Solomon. This collection was known as "The High One's Words," and forms the basis of the present poem. Few gnomic collections in the world's literary history present sounder wisdom more tersely expressed than the Havamal. Like the Book of Proverbs it occasionally rises to lofty heights of poetry. If it presents the worldly wisdom of a violent race, it also shows noble ideals of loyalty, truth, and unfaltering courage. Over time other poems were added to the original content dealing with wisdom which seemed, by their nature, to imply that the speaker was Odin. Thus a catalogue of runes, or charms, was tacked on, and also a set of proverbs. Here and there bits of verse crept in; and of course the loose structure of the poem made it easy for any reciter to insert new stanzas almost at will. This curious miscellany is what we now have as the Havamal Five separate elements are pretty clearly recognizable: (1) the Havamal proper (stanzas 1-80), a collection of proverbs and counsels for the conduct of life; (2) the Loddfafnismol (stanzas 111-138), a collection somewhat similar to the first, but specifically addressed to a certain Loddfafnir; (3) the Ljothatal (stanzas 147-165), a collection of charms; (4) the lovestory of Odin and Billing's daughter (stanzas 96-102); (5) the story of how Odin got the mead of poetry from the maiden Gunnloth (stanzas 103-110). There is also a brief passage (stanzas 139-146) telling how Odin won the runes, this passage being a natural introduction to the Ljothatal, and doubtless brought into the poem for that reason. 33% of the net profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charities.

Download or read book America s First Dynasty written by Richard Brookhiser and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-04-24 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They were America's longest lasting dynasty, the closest thing to a royal family our nation has ever known. The Adamses played a leading role in America's affairs for nearly two centuries -- from John, the self-taught lawyer who rose to the highest office in the government he helped to create; to John Quincy, the child prodigy who followed his father to the White House and fought slavery in Congress; to Charles Francis, the Civil War diplomat; to Henry, the brilliant scholar and journalist. Indeed, the history of the Adams family can be read as the history of America itself. For when the Adamses "looked at their past, they saw the nation's," writes author Richard Brookhiser. "When they looked at the nation's past, they saw themselves." America's First Dynasty charts the family's travels through American history along with an impressive cast of characters, among them George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Theodore Roosevelt. Brookhiser also details the darker side of the Adams experience, from the specters of alcoholism and suicide to the crushing burden of performance passed on from father to son. Yet by putting a human face on this legendary family, Brookhiser succeeds in creating an impassioned, heroic family portrait that the American public is not likely to forget.

Download or read book Novels Mont Saint Michel The Education written by Henry Adams and published by Springer Science & Business. This book was released on 1983 with total page 1294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made" (The New Republic), Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfect gift for everyone.

Download or read book Selected Letters written by Francesco Petrarca and published by I Tatti Renaissance Library. This book was released on 2017 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We naturally think of Petrarca first as a poet. But he was much more than that. The first of the great scholar-poets of the Renaissance, Petrarca was instrumental in establishing as a cultural goal the rediscovery and collection of manuscripts of the ancient Latin authors; thanks to Petrarca the humanist scholars who followed him became the main conduit for the transmission and revitalization of classical learning, a necessary condition of the wider European Renaissance. Even more significant was Petrarca's role in shaping the literary movement that became known as humanism, a movement that for centuries promoted the study and cultivation of Latin literature. A charismatic figure with a gift for friendship, his life - revealed above all in his letters - became a model for how to live a literary life, how to reconcile the study of pagan literature with sincere Christian belief, and how the study of ancient languages and literatures could serve both true religion and the public world of princes and republics, as well as promote moral excellence in mankind as a whole. He gave the humanities a set of ideals that they fed upon for centuries. He taught how the civic virtues and philosophical wisdom of the pagans could be combined with Christian teachings to produce a a richer civilization. He taught that the humanistic study of antiquity could transform lives and bring back virtue as a personal and public ideal. He more than anyone planted the great tree of Christian classicism which flourished in the West down to modern times.--