The nineteenth century was the heyday of furious contention between American political parties, and Joel Silbey has recaptured the drama and substance of those battles in a representative sampling of party pamphlets. Political parties mapped the landscape of electoral and ideological warfare, constructing images of themselves and of their adversaries that resonate and echo the basic characteristics of America's then reigning sets of ideas. The nature of political controversy, as well as the substance of politics, is embedded in these party documents which both united and divided Americans....
The nineteenth century was the heyday of furious contention between American political parties, and Joel Silbey has recaptured the drama and substa...
Cannibals All got more attention in William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator than any other book in the history of that abolitionist journal. And Lincoln is said to have been more angered by George Fitzhugh than by any other pro-slavery writer, yet he unconsciously paraphrased Cannibals All in his House Divided speech.
Fitzhugh was provocative because of his stinging attack on free society, laissez-faire economy, and wage slavery, along with their philosophical underpinnings. He used socialist doctrine to defend slavery and drew upon the same evidence Marx used in...
Cannibals All got more attention in William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator than any other book in the history of that abolitionist journ...
This Faustian tale of the spiritual disintegration of a young minister, written in the 1890s, deals with the impact of science on innocence and the collective despair that marked the transition into the modern age. In its realism, The Damnation of Theron Ware foreshadows Howells; in its conscious imagery it prefigures Norris, Crane, Henry James, and the symbolic realism of the 20th century. Its author, Harold Frederic, a London correspondent for the New York Times, wrote the novel two years before his death.
This Faustian tale of the spiritual disintegration of a young minister, written in the 1890s, deals with the impact of science on innocence and the co...
These eight reports by white settlers held captive by Indians gripped the imagination not only of early settlers but also of American writers through our history. Puritans among the Indians presents, in modern spelling, the best of the New England narratives. These both delineate the social and ideological struggle between the captors and the settlers, and constitute a dramatic rendition of the Puritans' spiritual struggle for redemption.
These eight reports by white settlers held captive by Indians gripped the imagination not only of early settlers but also of American writers through ...
George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature was the first book to attack the American myth of the superabundance and the inexhaustibility of the earth. It was, as Lewis Mumford said, "the fountainhead of the conservation movement," and few books since have had such an influence on the way men view and use land. "It is worth reading after a hundred years," Mr. Lowenthal points out, "not only because it taught important lessons in its day, but also because it still teaches them so well...Historical insight and contemporary passion make Man and Nature an enduring classic."
George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature was the first book to attack the American myth of the superabundance and the inexhaustibility of the eart...
