Originally published in 1969. Alan Roper studies the degree to which Arnold achieved a unity of human significance and literal landscape. If landscape poetry is to rise above the level of what Roper calls "country contentments in verse," the poet cannot think and describe alternately; his thinking and describing must be a part of one another. That Matthew Arnold was aware of the difficulty in achieving the necessary unity becomes clear in his own criticism, which Roper examines along with a large and representative number of Arnold's poems. Considering the latter roughly in the order they were published—except for a fuller analysis of Empedocles on Etna, "The Scholar-Gipsy," and "Thyrsis"—Roper follows important changes in Arnold's view of the function and nature of poetry as it emerged in the poems themselves. Basic to the author's critical method is a distinction between geographical sites and poetic landscapes. Focusing on the ways that Arnold and, to a lesser extent, the Augustan and Romantic poets before him untied thought and description, Roper adds a critical dimension to Arnold scholarship. Concerned not with the development of Arnold's ideas nor with their sources in classical antiquity and the Romantic period, he considers Arnold a self-conscious poet who, though sometimes successful, became increasingly unsuccessful in his efforts to imbue a landscape with meaning for individual or social man.
At a time when liberalism is in disarray, this vastly illuminating book locates the origins of its crisis. Those origins, says Alan Brinkley, are paradoxically situated during the second term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose New Deal had made liberalism a fixture of American politics and society. The End of Reform shows how the liberalism of the early New Deal—which set out to repair and, if necessary, restructure America’s economy—gave way to its contemporary counterpart, which is less hostile to corporate capitalism and more solicitous of individual rights. Clearly and dramatically, Brinkley identifies the personalities and events responsible for this transformation while pointing to the broader trends in American society that made the politics of reform increasingly popular. It is both a major reinterpretation of the New Deal and a crucial map of the road to today’s political landscape.
American independence was won not just with ideas and words, but also through force of arms. A key element of that battlefield victory was the combat leadership provided by a fierce list of hard-fighting warriors at the regimental, brigade, and division echelons or their naval equivalents. Founding Fighters recounts the stories of fifteen of the American Revolution's most important and colorful battlefield commanders. Collectively, these men participated in virtually all of the war's significant battles and campaigns. They experienced the conflict in all its variants: conventional contest between opposing armies, brutal guerilla struggle between partisans and regulars, frontier and naval fighting, and civil war pitting neighbors, and even family members against each other. These founding fighters helped win stunning victories, knew ignominious defeats, and suffered physical and spiritual privation through times when ultimate victory and independence appeared impossibly remote. While the Founding Fathers remain eternally popular with the general American reading public, a number of important Revolutionary-era military figures remain much less known (and, in some cases, forgotten). Cate rectifies this. Richard Montgomery, Charles Lee, and Horatio Gates were former British officers who turned from redcoats to rebels, casting their lots with the patriot cause. Henry Knox and Nathanael Greene were self-taught amateurs who shared New England roots and an innate genius for war. Benedict Arnold and John Paul Jones each possessed burning personal ambition and zeal for glory, traits that led one to ignominy and disgrace and the other to immortality as the father of the American Navy. A trio of South Carolinians—Thomas Sumter, Andrew Pickens, and Francis Marion—waged savage partisan warfare in some of the war's darkest days against British occupiers and their Loyalist supporters. Three rough and ready frontiersmen—Ethan Allen, George Rogers Clark, and Daniel Morgan—inspired their followers to important victories. More than a mere examination of battlefield exploits and personalities, however, this book illuminates fascinating aspects of American military and cultural history and offers a superb window for investigating two of the enduring themes of the American military tradition, civil-military relations and the respective roles and worth of professional and citizen soldiers.
A major aim of Grob's study is to show Arnold as poet to be possessed of far greater philosophic depth and subtlety than his critics have usually credited him with by identifying the deep affinities and shared weltanschauung of his poetic vision with the metaphysical pessimism of Schopenhauer, the major European philosopher whose insistence on the cosmic opposition between the world as will and the world as idea provided the most important philosophic alternative in the nineteenth century to the age's otherwise dominant progressive historicism."--Jacket.
How did liberalism, the great political tradition that from the New Deal to the 1960s seemed to dominate American politics, fall from favor so far and so fast? In this history of liberalism since the 1930s, a distinguished historian offers an eloquent account of postwar liberalism, where it came from, where it has gone, and why. The book supplies a crucial chapter in the history of twentieth-century American politics as well as a valuable and clear perspective on the state of our nation's politics today. Liberalism and Its Discontents moves from a penetrating interpretation of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal to an analysis of the profound and frequently corrosive economic, social, and cultural changes that have undermined the liberal tradition. The book moves beyond an examination of the internal weaknesses of liberalism and the broad social and economic forces it faced to consider the role of alternative political traditions in liberalism's downfall. What emerges is a picture of a dominant political tradition far less uniform and stable--and far more complex and contested--than has been argued. The author offers as well a masterly assessment of how some of the leading historians of the postwar era explained (or failed to explain) liberalism and other political ideologies in the last half-century. He also makes clear how historical interpretation was itself a reflection of liberal assumptions that began to collapse more quickly and completely than almost any scholar could have imagined a generation ago. As both political history and a critique of that history, Liberalism and Its Discontents, based on extraordinary essays written over the last decade, leads to a new understanding of the shaping of modern America.
“Excellent . . . deserves high praise. Mr. Taylor conveys this sprawling continental history with economy, clarity, and vividness.”—Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the nation its democratic framework. Alan Taylor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history. The American Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain’s colonies, fueled by local conditions and resistant to control. Emerging from the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, the revolution pivoted on western expansion as well as seaboard resistance to British taxes. When war erupted, Patriot crowds harassed Loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance with their cause. The war exploded in set battles like Saratoga and Yorktown and spread through continuing frontier violence. The discord smoldering within the fragile new nation called forth a movement to concentrate power through a Federal Constitution. Assuming the mantle of “We the People,” the advocates of national power ratified the new frame of government. But it was Jefferson’s expansive “empire of liberty” that carried the revolution forward, propelling white settlement and slavery west, preparing the ground for a new conflagration.
We take reputations for granted. Believing in the bad and the good natures of our notorious or illustrious forebears is part of our shared national heritage. Yet we are largely ignorant of how such reputations came to be, who was instrumental in creating them, and why. Even less have we considered how villains, just as much as heroes, have helped our society define its values. Presenting essays on America's most reviled traitor, its worst president, and its most controversial literary ingénue (Benedict Arnold, Warren G. Harding, and Lolita), among others, sociologist Gary Alan Fine analyzes negative, contested, and subcultural reputations. Difficult Reputations offers eight compelling historical case studies as well as a theoretical introduction situating the complex roles in culture and history that negative reputations play. Arguing the need for understanding real conditions that lead to proposed interpretations, as well as how reputations are given meaning over time, this book marks an important contribution to the sociologies of culture and knowledge.
We take reputations for granted. Believing in the bad and the good natures of our notorious or illustrious forebears is part of our shared national heritage. Yet we are largely ignorant of how such reputations came to be, who was instrumental in creating them, and why. Even less have we considered how villains, just as much as heroes, have helped our society define its values. Presenting essays on America's most reviled traitor, its worst president, and its most controversial literary ingénue (Benedict Arnold, Warren G. Harding, and Lolita), among others, sociologist Gary Alan Fine analyzes negative, contested, and subcultural reputations. Difficult Reputations offers eight compelling historical case studies as well as a theoretical introduction situating the complex roles in culture and history that negative reputations play. Arguing the need for understanding real conditions that lead to proposed interpretations, as well as how reputations are given meaning over time, this book marks an important contribution to the sociologies of culture and knowledge.
For the past 150 years, Western intellectuals have trumpeted contempt for capitalism and capitalists. They have written novels, plays, and manifestos to demonstrate the evils of the economic system in which they live. Dislike and contempt for the bourgeoisie, the middle classes, industry, and commerce have been a prominent trait of leading Western writers and artists. Mind vs. Money is an analytical history of how and why so many intellectuals have opposed capitalism. It is also an argument for how this opposition can be tempered. Historically, intellectuals have expressed their rejection of capitalism through many different movements, including nationalism, anti-Semitism, socialism, fascism, communism, and the 1960s counterculture. Hostility to capitalism takes new forms today. The anti-globalization, Green, communitarian, and New Age movements are all examples. Intellectuals give such movements the legitimacy and leadership they would otherwise lack. What unites radical intellectuals of the nineteenth century, communists and fascists of the twentieth, and anti-globalization protestors of the twenty-first, along with many other intellectuals not associated with these movements, is their rejection of capitalism. Kahan argues that intellectuals are a permanently alienated elite in capitalist societies. In myriad forms, and on many fronts, the battle between Mind and Money continues today. Anti-Americanism is one of them. Americans like to see their country as a beacon of freedom and prosperity. But in the eyes of many European and American intellectuals, when America is identified with capitalism, it is transformed from moral beacon into the "Great Satan." This is just one of the issues Mind vs. Money explores. The conflict between Mind and Money is the great, unresolved conflict of modern society. To end it, we must first understand it.
The American Revolution was a war, but it was also a time, a span of history, in which some people fought, but most just lived. They thought, acted, worked, raised families, worshipped, built, sold, bought, and tried to live as best they could in a time of hope, anxiety, despair, loss, gain, and, above all, disruption. In the Time of the Revolution is a popular, single-volume history of the American Revolution, 1775 to 1783, an intensely active, exciting, and critical span of time in North America. It began with a lopsided skirmish at Lexington, Massachusetts, culminated militarily in a major amphibious campaign mounted by a large Franco-American army against British army and naval forces at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781, and then passed through two more years of desultory combat and cruel fights between diehard Loyalists and vengeful Patriots before ending in the Treaty of Paris. During these eight years in an America that was a collection of young towns on the edge of a vast wilderness, the break-up with the mother country was the central fact of life.
Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term "computer" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, "I wish I'd used my calculus," hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.
In response to the ever-changing challenges of teaching the survey course, Understanding the American Promise combines a newly abridged narrative with an innovative chapter architecture to focus students' attention on what's truly significant. Each chapter is fully designed to guide students' comprehension and foster their development of historical skills. Brief and affordable but still balanced in its coverage, this new textbook combines distinctive study aids, a bold new design, and lively art to give your students a clear pathway to what's important.
In response to the ever-changing challenges of teaching the survey course, Understanding the American Promise combines a newly abridged narrative with an innovative chapter architecture to focus students' attention on what's truly significant. Each chapter is fully designed to guide students' comprehension and foster their development of historical skills. Brief and affordable but still balanced in its coverage, this new textbook combines distinctive study aids, a bold new design, and lively art to give your students a clear pathway to what's important.
Trinity: The Burrs versus Alexander Hamilton and the United States of America will be the first book to draw on unreported documents and genealogical information to reveal an unprecedented look into the relationships of Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Trinity Church Corporation and the Loyalists of Manhattan Island. Author Alan J. Clark shows in new perspective the battles and intrigues leading beyond the American Revolutionary War. With the melding of genealogy and timeline analysis Clark examines some of the intriguing ciphered letters of Aaron Burr to his daughter Theodosia, and looks again at Burr’s curious and complex war time exploits to determine where his Loyalist tendencies actually began. Clark further examines the land leases then traded prior, during, and after the war as speculation, or possibly as rewards from the English Crown for services performed in its favor in the colonies primarily through the Corporation of Trinity Church. The economics of early Manhattan and the Atlantic colonies were bolstered by the complex and secular behavior of the Corporation of Trinity Church acting as land bank for the Loyalists to the Throne of England. Clark appears to fill in the gaps in many recently published tomes by delving deeper into the actions of Burr and Hamilton, examining their extensive familial connections and behaviors to arrive at a complex web of intricacy bringing to life American History at its most personal level. This book does not reiterate the well worn paths of American History. Instead, it brings a crisp new approach that makes sense of seemingly insignificant, disjointed and inconsistent stories of the early history of our country.
Dr. Alan Gribben, a foremost Twain scholar, made waves in 1980 with the publication of Mark Twain's Library, a study that exposed for the first time the breadth of Twain's reading and influences. Prior to Gribben's work, much of Twain's reading history was assumed lost, but through dogged searching Gribben was able to source much of Twain's library. Mark Twain's Literary Resources is a much-expanded examination of Twain's library and readings. Volume I included Gribben's reflections on the work involved in cataloging Twain's reading and analysis of Twain's influences and opinions. This volume, long awaited, is an in-depth and comprehensive accounting of Twain's literary history. Each work read or owned by Twain is listed, along with information pertaining to editions, locations, and more. Gribben also includes scholarly annotations that explain the significance of many works, making this volume of Mark Twain's Literary Resources one of the most important additions to our understanding of America's greatest author.
A guide to preparing for the Graduate Record Exam, providing test-taking advice, a diagnostic test, reviews of verbal acuity, math, and analytical writing, and nine practice exams with answers and explanations, as well as a CD-ROM with additional resources.
You're no idiot, of course. You know the American Revolution started when those guys in Boston threw some tea off a boat. Or was it when Paul Revere made his famous ride? Let's face it: when it comes to knowing about our nation's struggle for independence, our grade-school memories are about as trustworthy as Benedict Arnold. Don't blush red (or white, or blue) yet! The Complete Idiot's Guide® to the American Revolution is an authoritative overview of the conflict, filled with little-known facts that will enlighten even the most educated history buff. In this Complete Idiot's Guide®, you get:
The White Witch, Aslan, fauns and talking beasts, centaurs and epic battles between good and evil -- all these have become a part of our collective imagination through the classic volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia. Over the past half century, children everywhere have escaped into this world and delighted in its wonders and enchantments. Yet what we do know of the man who created Narnia? This biography sheds new light on the making of the original Narnian, C. S. Lewis himself. Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential religious writer of his day. An Oxford don and scholar of medieval literature, he loved to debate philosophy at his local pub, and his wartime broadcasts on the basics of Christian belief made him a celebrity in his native Britain. Yet one of the most intriguing aspects of Clive Staples Lewis remains a mystery. How did this middle-aged Irish bachelor turn to the writing of stories for children -- stories that would become among the most popular and beloved ever written? Alan Jacobs masterfully tells the story of the original Narnian. From Lewis's childhood days in Ireland playing with his brother, Warnie, to his horrific experiences in the trenches during World War I, to his friendship with J. R. R. Tolkien (and other members of the "Inklings"), and his remarkable late-life marriage to Joy Davidman, Jacobs traces the events and people that shaped Lewis's philosophy, theology, and fiction. The result is much more than a conventional biography of Lewis: Jacobs tells the story of a profound and extraordinary imagination. For those who grew up with Narnia, or for those just discovering it, The Narnian tells a remarkable tale of a man who knew great loss and great delight, but who knew above all that the world holds far more richness and meaning than the average eye can see.
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