Shipping Weight:
.247|Dimensions:
5.01 x .54 x 8.02 inches
Share
Description
A New York Review Books Original
The ideal introduction and companion to Adams’s "massive and magisterial" history of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, presenting an indelible picture of America’s startling rise to world power.
Henry Adams’s nine-volume History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison is the first great history of America as well as the first great American work of history, one that rivals Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in its eloquence and sweep. But where Gibbon told of imperial collapse, Adams recorded the rise of an unprecedented new power, America, which, he shows, beat nearly inconceivable odds to expand in a mere seventeen years —1800 to 1817—from a backward provincial outpost to an imperial power. What made this transformation all the more unexpected was that it occurred under the watch of two presidents who were in principle dead set against it, but whose policies promoted it energetically. A masterpiece not only of research and analysis but of style and art, Adams’s history is a splendid coming-of-age story, with romantic and even comic overtones, recording a young nation’s amazed awakening to its own unsuspected promise.
The Jeffersonian Transformation presents a new selection from Adams’s History, the first to bring together in one volume the opening and closing sections of the work, with an introduction by the historian and political commentator Garry Wills. The two sections of Adams’s History included here present a bold picture of America before and after the Jeffersonian transformation. Together they define the scope and argument of the History as a whole, while raising still-provocative questions about the relationship between American democracy and American empire.
About the Author
See this thread for more information.NotedHenry Brooks Adamswrote his nine-volumeHistory of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison(1889-1891) and alsoThe Education of Henry Adams, a famous autobiography, in 1918.This oldest and most distinguished family in Boston producedJohn AdamsandJohn Qunicy Adams, two American presidents, and thus gave Henry the opportunity to pursue a wide-ranging variety of intellectual interests during the course of his life. Functioning in the worlds of both practical men and affairs as a journalist and an assistant to his father, an American diplomat in Washington and London, and of ideas as a prolific writer, as the editor of the prestigiousNorth American Review, and as a professor of medieval, European, and American history at Harvard, Adams of the few men of his era attempted to understand art, thought and culture as one complex force field of interacting energies.He publishedMont Saint Michel and Chartres, his masterwork in this dazzling effort, in 1904. Taken together with his other books, Adams in this spiritual, monumental volume attempts to bring together into a vast synthesis all of his knowledge of politics, economics, psychology, science, philosophy, art, and literature to attempt to understand the place of the individual in society. They constitute one of the greatest philosophical meditations on the human condition in all of literature.
Please use your Email instead of your Username to login.
Caution: Deleting Your Account will permanently remove all associated data, which cannot be recovered.
Your cart's total less than the Gift Card value. If you checkout now, the remaining amount will elapse as Gift Cards are for one time use only. Continue Shopping to fully consume your Gift Card.
The Transaction was unsuccessfull. Please try again.