In a bravura performance that ranges from Aaron Burr to O. J. Simpson, Robert A. Ferguson traces the legal meaning and cultural implications of prominent American trials across the history of the nation. His interdisciplinary investigation carries him from courtroom transcripts to newspaper accounts, and on to the work of such imaginative writers as Emerson, Thoreau, William Dean Howells, and E. L. Doctorow. Ferguson shows how courtrooms are forced to cope with unresolved communal anxieties and how they sometimes make legal decisions that change the way Americans think about themselves. Burning questions control the narrative. How do such trials mushroom into major public dramas with fundamental ideas at stake? Why did outcomes that we now see as unjust enjoy such strong communal support at the time? At what point does overexposure undermine a trial’s role as a legal proceeding? Ultimately, such questions lead Ferguson to the issue of modern press coverage of courtrooms. While acknowledging that media accounts can skew perceptions, Ferguson argues forcefully in favor of full television coverage of them—and he takes the Supreme Court to task for its failure to grasp the importance of this issue. Trials must be seen to be understood, but Ferguson reminds us that we have a duty, currently ignored, to ensure that cameras serve the court rather than the media. The Trial in American Life weaves Ferguson’s deep knowledge of American history, law, and culture into a fascinating book of tremendous contemporary relevance. “A distinguished law professor, accomplished historian, and fine writer, Robert Ferguson is uniquely qualified to narrate and analyze high-profile trials in American history. This is a superb book and a tremendous achievement. The chapter on John Brown alone is worth the price of admission.”—Judge Richard Posner “A noted scholar of law and literature, [Ferguson] offers a work that is broad in scope yet focuses our attention on certain themes, notably the possibility of injustice, as illustrated by the Haymarket and Rosenberg prosecutions; the media’s obsession with pandering to baser instincts; and the future of televised trials. . . . One of the best books written on this subject in quite some time.”—Library Journal, starred review
Reading the Early Republic focuses attention on the forgotten dynamism of thought in the founding era. In every case, the documents, novels, pamphlets, sermons, journals, and slave narratives of the early American nation are richer and more intricate than modern readers have perceived. Rebellion, slavery, and treason--the mingled stories of the Revolution--still haunt national thought. Robert Ferguson shows that the legacy that made the country remains the idea of what it is still trying to become. He cuts through the pervading nostalgia about national beginnings to recapture the manic-depressive tones of its first expression. He also has much to say about the reconfiguration of charity in American life, the vital role of the classical ideal in projecting an unthinkable continental republic, the first manipulations of the independent American woman, and the troubled integration of civic and commercial understandings in the original claims of prosperity as national virtue. Reading the Early Republic uses the living textual tradition against history to prove its case. The first formative writings are more than sacred artifacts. They remain the touchstones of the durable promise and the problems in republican thought
Written by a renowned literary critic and legal historian, Practice Extended illuminates the intricacies of legal language and thought and the law's relationship to society, literature, and culture. Robert A. Ferguson details how judicial opinions are written, how legal thought and philosophy inform ideas, and how best to appreciate a courtroom novel. With chapters touching on a wide range of subjects, including immigration, eloquence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Supreme Court case over James Joyce's Ulysses, Practice Extended provides an ambitious argument for the importance of language in law and a much-needed analysis of the often vexed relationship between law and literature. Ferguson challenges the notion of law as a hermetic enterprise only accessible to experts. He reveals the discipline's relationships to history, religion, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and the visual arts, offering a rich account of how the law has shaped and has been shaped by communal thought. He also recognizes the critical role of literature and other outside views in showcasing the social problems that law takes up. Practice Extended reflects Ferguson's crucial role as a pioneer in developing the field of law and literature. His writing reminds us of the need for a critical approach to the law that draws on the insights of literature to better understand political and legal history and the documents, laws, and arguments that shape our present. At the same time, this volume also showcases the ways in which the law has been integrated into works of literature, from Billy Budd to contemporary courtroom thrillers.
This concise literary history of the American Enlightenment captures the varied and conflicting voices of religious and political conviction in the decades when the new nation was formed. Robert Ferguson's trenchant interpretation yields new understanding of this pivotal period for American culture.
This is a picture book in words. Each poem stimulates an image of the worlds in which we live, their hills and mountains, cold northern seas and hot deserts, war, peace, loneliness, and the comfort of friends and child-filled families, together with reminders of the inner matters of the soul—faith, worship, birth, death, and the hereafter. It is a book to excite, stir, inspire, and frequently to raise a smile at the memories we all share.
The wooden holiday cabin, or hytte, is a staple of Norwegian life. Robert Ferguson, author of Scandinavians, explores the significance of a national icon in this charming, affectionate history. Turf-roofed and wooden-built, offering fresh air, breathtaking views and peaceful isolation, the wooden cabin home – or hytte – is a crucial part of Norwegian national identity. In 2016, Robert Ferguson and his wife bought a piece of land high up in the Hardangervidda, and on it they built a cabin. As the cabin takes shape, Ferguson learns how native Norwegians have married a new-found urban affluence to their past as a tight-knit rural community-nation, and confronts his own ideas about the dream-tradition of the hytte, drawing an affectionate but unsentimental portrait of Norwegian culture, society and landscape. 'Singular and captivating: the pursuit of a dream' Professor John Carey 'Illuminating' TLS 'An uncompromising journey into the dark cold north, to reveal the warmth that comes from deep community bonds' Tim Ecott
With more people living alone today than at any time in U.S. history, Ferguson investigates loneliness in American fiction, from its mythological beginnings in Rip Van Winkle to the postmodern terrors of 9/11. At issue is the dark side of a trumpeted American individualism. Ferguson shows that we can learn, from our literature, how to live alone.
The role of religion in early American literature has been endlessly studied; the role of the law has been virtually ignored. Robert A. Ferguson's book seeks to correct this imbalance. With the Revolution, Ferguson demonstrates, the lawyer replaced the clergyman as the dominant intellectual force in the new nation. Lawyers wrote the first important plays, novels, and poems; as gentlemen of letters they controlled many of the journals and literary societies; and their education in the law led to a controlling aesthetic that shaped both the civic and the imaginative literature of the early republic. An awareness of this aesthetic enables us to see works as diverse as Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia and Irving's burlesque History of New York as unified texts, products of the legal mind of the time. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the great political orations were written by lawyers, and so too were the literary works of Trumbull, Tyler, Brackenridge, Charles Brockden Brown, William Cullen Bryant, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., and a dozen other important writers. To recover the original meaning and context of these writings is to gain new understanding of a whole era of American culture. The nexus of law and letters persisted for more than a half-century. Ferguson explores a range of factors that contributed to its gradual dissolution: the yielding of neoclassicism to romanticism; the changing role of the writer; the shift in the lawyer's stance from generalist to specialist and from ideological spokesman to tactician of compromise; the onslaught of Jacksonian democracy and the problems of a country torn by sectional strife. At the same time, he demonstrates continuities with the American Renaissance. And in Abraham Lincoln he sees a memorable late flowering of the earlier tradition.
Robert Ferguson diagnoses all parts of a massive, out-of-control punishment regime. Turning the spotlight on the plight of prisoners, he asks the American people, Do we want our prisons to be this way? Acknowledging the suffering of prisoners and understanding what punishers do when they punish are the first steps toward a better, more just system.
“An engaging, layered look into a culture complex enough both to produce stylish rain gear and to embrace the foul weather that necessitates it.” —The New York Times Book Review We fill our homes with Nordic furniture; we envy their humane social welfare system and healthy outdoor lifestyle; we devour their crime fiction. Even their strangely attractive melancholia seems to express a stoic, commonsensical acceptance of life’s vicissitudes. But how valid is this outsider’s view of Scandinavia, and how accurate is our picture of life in Scandinavia today? Scandinavians follows a chronological progression across the Northern centuries: the Vendel era of Swedish prehistory; the age of the Vikings; the Christian conversions of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland; the unified Scandinavian state of the late Middle Ages; the sea-change of the Reformation; the kingdom of Denmark-Norway; King Gustav Adolphus and the age of Sweden’s greatness; the cultural golden age of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Munch; the impact of the Second World War; Scandinavia’s postwar social democratic nirvana; and the terror attack of Anders Behring Breivik. Scandinavians is also a personal investigation, with award-winning author Robert Ferguson as the ideal companion as he explores not only the region’s society, politics, culture, and temperament, but also wide-ranging topics such as the power and mystique of Scandinavian women, from the Valkyries to the Vikings; from Nora and Hedda to Garbo and Bergman. “A delightful history in which the author truly captures ‘the soul of the North.’ ”—Kirkus Reviews
Places and books like Rosslyn Chapel and The Da Vinci code have focused attention on Scotland's Knights Templar. Who they were and what they did has been touched upon, but never properly explored until now. They were close advisors to Scotland's early kings; they were major property owners and respected landlords in a harsh and unforgiving time; and they were secretive and arrogant. But did they really flee from France to Scotland just prior to their arrest in 1307? Did they fight with Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn? In The Knights Templar and Scotland Robert Ferguson intertwines Templar and Scottish history, from the foundation of the order in the early twelfth century right up to the present day. Including a comparison of the arrest of the Templars in France with the Templar Inquisition at Holyrood, and an examination of the part they played at Bannockburn, this is an essential book for anyone with an interest in history of the Knights Templar.
It was the festive season when Glasgow taxi driver, Donald Forbes, waited for one last fare, but unknown to him, the mysterious passenger that entered his cab would create a life-changing epiphany. A fantastical journey beckoned when his final client activated a labyrinthine voyage. In this spiritual ride, he saw himself as a young boy, met his dead father, had his life saved by a ghost, and travelled back through his extraordinary life timeline; intending to help others with similar objectives.
When you have achieved the greatest treasure discovery of your life, so notably told in Fool's Paradise, Bobby McAllister discovers that one of his many collections could be a fake. This greatly disturbs him and sets into motion one of the most daring search efforts that is steeped in art, history, mystery and greed. With a passion to find the truth, he calls upon his friend Granger Lawton, and launches a most daring effort to find the ones responsible for this forgery. This now takes them from the shores of the Savannah River, to Paris; London and St. Petersburg, where he learns about the history of the Faberge' Eggs; the Romanov Dynasty; the involvement of KGB agents to flood the art world with fake treasures of art history. Tragedy strikes close to home as the search for truth reveals colossal fraud perpetrated by members of the nobility; elements of government; privateers and enemies of McAllister. An incredible discovery reveals the location of lost treasures at the mouth of the River of Dreams. A violent confrontation eliminates those responsible for this fake scheme and the recovery of the real Faberge' Eggs. This set into motion this incredible adventure, and finding the truth is now fulfilled....
Presents a history of the Nordic warriors and explorers that plundered and traded their way across Europe, and discusses how ultimately their violence and conquests helped spread and enhance accomplishments in the arts, culture and government.
Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, literary stylist and social critic. Born in 1813 in Copenhagen, his philosophical work addressed living as a single individual and the importance of personal choice. A famously fierce critic of the idealist thinkers of his time, including Hegel, Goethe, and Hans Christian Anderson, he is regarded as the first existentialist philosopher, and his Fear and Trembling is one of the classics of modern philosophy. Here you will find insights from his greatest works, in the "Great Thinkers on Modern Life" series, which highlights ideas most relevant to ordinary, everyday dilemmas.
Although Robert Morris (1734-1806), "the Financier of the American Revolution," was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, a powerful committee chairman in the Continental Congress, an important figure in Pennsylvania politics, and perhaps the most prominent businessman of his day, he is today least known of the great national leaders of the Revolutionary era.This oversight is being rectified by this definitive publication project that transcribes and carefully annotates the Office of Finance diary, correspondence, and other official papers written by Morris during his administration as superintendent of finance from 1781 to 1784.
“An excellent workbook-like guide” to the nuts and bolts of professional conflict and the strategies you need to make conflict work for you (Booklist, starred review). Every workplace is a minefield of conflict, and all office tension is shaped by power. Making Conflict Work teaches you to identify the nature of a conflict, determine your power position relative to anyone opposing you, and use the best strategy for achieving your goals. These strategies are equally effective for executives, managers and their direct reports, consultants, and attorneys—anyone who has ever had a disagreement with someone in their organization. Packed with helpful self-assessment exercises and action plans, this book gives you the tools you need to achieve greater satisfaction and success. “A genuine winner.” —Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence “This book is a necessity . . . Read it.” —Leymah Gbowee, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Liberian peace activist “Innovative and practical.” —Lawrence Susskind, Program on Negotiation cofounder “Navigating conflict effectively is an essential component of leadership. Making Conflict Work illustrates when to compromise and when to continue driving forward.” —Hon. David N. Dinkins, 106th mayor of the City of New York “An excellent workbook-like guide.” —Booklist, starred review
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