Letters have long been read as primary sources for biography and history, but their performative, fictive, and textual dimensions have only recently attracted serious notice. In this book, William Merrill Decker examines the place of the personal letter in American popular and literary culture from the colonial to the postmodern period. After offering an overview of the genre, Decker explores epistolary practices that coincide with American experiences of space, settlement, separation, and reunion. He discusses letters written by such well-known and well-educated...
Letters have long been read as primary sources for biography and history, but their performative, fictive, and textual dimensions have only re...
The University of Virginia Press is proud to add the Massachusetts Historical Society to our list of distribution partners. Beginning immediately, we will be the exclusive distributor of the following new titles and backlist from the society's fine selection of books. For Henry Adams at the turn of the twentieth century, as for his successors in the twenty-first, the relation of mind to a world remade by technology and geopolitical conflict largely determined the destiny of civil life.
The University of Virginia Press is proud to add the Massachusetts Historical Society to our list of distribution partners. Beginning immediately, we ...
In the mid-1880s, Henry Adams committed himself to a posture that has since been associated with his name: neglected patrician, doomsayer, literary man whose bereavement at his wife's suicide confirmed his abandonment of an active public life. Adams (1838-1918) defined himself as other than contemporary Americans. Yet he also cast himself as the Republic's last true patriot, and beneath his reticence lay the firm belief that he was the one man who could save America -- if only his voice were heard.
This insightful book focuses on the relationship between Adams and his audience,...
In the mid-1880s, Henry Adams committed himself to a posture that has since been associated with his name: neglected patrician, doomsayer, literary...
What was it like to grow up as the son of a Kodak engineer during the company s glory days? Decker presents a vivid portrait of life in the Rochester suburbs where residents eagerly conformed to period expectations: two kids, two cars, a move from a snug middle-class neighborhood to a spacious upper-middle-class subdivision. In recollecting the blithe and troubled scenes of America s postwar prosperity, Decker evokes a bygone era with rich detail and biting clarity. Depicting the banalities of the place and time, Kodak Elegy narrates a political education shaped by the Civil Rights...
What was it like to grow up as the son of a Kodak engineer during the company s glory days? Decker presents a vivid portrait of life in the Rochest...
