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John Adams (The American Presidents Series)
by John P. Diggins Arthur M. SchlesingerJohn Adams is overshadowed by Washington and Jefferson. Adams seemed temperamentally unsuited for the presidency. Yet in many ways he was the perfect successor to Washington in terms of ability, experience, and popularity.
John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy
by Luke MayvilleLong before "the one percent" became a protest slogan, American founding father John Adams feared the power of a class he called simply "the few"--the wellborn, the beautiful, and especially the rich. In John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy, Luke Mayville presents the first extended exploration of Adams's preoccupation with a problem that has a renewed urgency today: the way in which inequality threatens to corrode democracy and empower a small elite. By revisiting Adams's political writings, Mayville draws out the statesman's fears about the danger of oligarchy in America and his unique understanding of the political power of wealth--a surprising and largely forgotten theory that promises to illuminate today's debates about inequality and its political consequences.Adams believed that wealth is politically powerful in modern societies not merely because money buys influence, but also because citizens admire and even sympathize with the rich. He thought wealth is powerful in the same way that beauty is powerful--it distinguishes its possessor and prompts reactions of approval and veneration. Citizens vote for--and with--the rich not because, as is often said, they hope to be rich one day, but because they esteem the rich and submit to their wishes. Mayville explores Adams's theory of wealth and power in the context of his broader concern about social and economic inequality, and also examines his ideas about how oligarchy might be countered.A compelling work of intellectual history, John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy also has important lessons for today's world of increasing inequality.
John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy
by Luke MayvilleWhy American founding father John Adams feared the political power of the rich—and how his ideas illuminate today's debates about inequality and its consequencesLong before the "one percent" became a protest slogan, American founding father John Adams feared the power of a class he called simply "the few"—the wellborn, the beautiful, and especially the rich. In John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy, Luke Mayville explores Adams’s deep concern with the way in which inequality threatens to corrode democracy and empower a small elite. Adams believed that wealth is politically powerful not merely because money buys influence, but also because citizens admire and even identify with the rich. Mayville explores Adams’s theory of wealth and power in the context of his broader concern about social and economic disparities—reflections that promise to illuminate contemporary debates about inequality and its political consequences. He also examines Adams’s ideas about how oligarchy might be countered. A compelling work of intellectual history, John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy has important lessons for today’s world.
John Adams and the Magic Bobblehead (The President and Me)
by Deborah KalbAdventure, history, and the drama of family life intertwine in this engrossing tale of a fifth-grade girl struggling to find her place after her mom remarries and she finds herself stuck with a younger stepbrother. Find out what happens when Ava and her newly blended family take a trip to Boston, where she buys a magic bobblehead and is unexpectedly transported to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Ava and her stepbrother, J. P., travel back and forth with John and Abigail Adams and their children, from Massachusetts, to Philadelphia, to the White House, to France, she learns about history, friendship, and how to deal with new situations, including her recently blended family. This sequel to The President and Me: George Washington and the Magic Hat features some of the same characters.
John Adams Under Fire: The Founding Father's Fight for Justice in the Boston Massacre Murder Trial
by David Fisher Dan AbramsThe New York Times bestselling author of Lincoln’s Last Trial and host of LivePD Dan Abrams and David Fisher tell the story of a trial that would change history. <P><P>History remembers John Adams as a Founding Father and our country’s second president. But in the tense years before the American Revolution, he was still just a lawyer, fighting for justice in one of the most explosive murder trials of the era.On the night of March 5, 1770, shots were fired by British soldiers on the streets of Boston, killing five civilians. <P><P>The Boston Massacre has often been called the first shots of the American Revolution. As John Adams would later remember, “On that night the formation of American independence was born.” Yet when the British soldiers faced trial, the young lawyer Adams was determined that they receive a fair one. He volunteered to represent them, keeping the peace in a powder keg of a colony, and in the process created some of the foundations of what would become United States law. <P><P>In this book, New York Times bestselling authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher draw on the trial transcript, using Adams’s own words to transport readers to colonial Boston, a city roiling with rebellion, where British military forces and American colonists lived side by side, waiting for the spark that would start a war. <P><P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
John Adams's Republic: The One, the Few, and the Many
by Richard Alan RyersonThis trailblazing study explores Adams’s political thought across his entire career in law and public service.Winner of the Sally and Morris Lasky Prize of The Center for Political History Lebanon Velley CollegeScholars have examined John Adams’s writings and beliefs for generations, but no one has brought such impressive credentials to the task as Richard Alan Ryerson in John Adams’s Republic. The editor-in-chief of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Adams Papers project for nearly two decades, Ryerson offers readers of this magisterial book a fresh, firmly grounded account of Adams’s political thought and its development.Of all the founding fathers, Ryerson argues, John Adams may have worried the most about the problem of social jealousy and political conflict in the new republic. Ryerson explains how these concerns, coupled with Adams’s concept of executive authority and his fear of aristocracy, deeply influenced his political mindset. He weaves together a close analysis of Adams’s public writings, a comprehensive chronological narrative beginning in the 1760s, and an exploration of the second president’s private diary, manuscript autobiography, and personal and family letters, revealing Adams’s most intimate political thoughts across six decades.How, Adams asked, could a self-governing country counter the natural power and influence of wealthy elites and their friends in government? Ryerson argues that he came to believe a strong executive could hold at bay the aristocratic forces that posed the most serious dangers to a republican society. The first study ever published to closely examine all of Adams’s political writings, from his youth to his long retirement, John Adams’s Republic should appeal to everyone who seeks to know more about America’s first major political theorist.
John and Betty Stam: Missionary Martyrs
by Vance ChristiePart of the Heroes of The Faith series, this is the biography of John and Betty Stam martyred in China in 1934.
John Apperson's Lake George (Images of America)
by Ellen Apperson BrownIn 1900, John Apperson, a young man from Virginia, began working for General Electric in Schenectady, New York. An avid hiker and outdoor enthusiast, Apperson soon found others interested in Adirondack sports such as ice-fishing and skate-sailing, and they started taking camping trips into the north country. He discovered Lake George one summer while attending a boat race, and thus began his lifelong love affair with the magnificent scenery. Apperson devoted his energy and resources to saving the land from various threats, including commercial development, logging, illegal squatters, and erosion. Apperson launched a two-pronged strategy, promoting Lake George for its recreational potential while recruiting people to help repair the shores of islands. He earned the respect of leading politicians, philanthropists, and journalists, including George Foster Peabody, New York governor Al Smith, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. His actions brought him into open conflict with powerful adversaries, too.
John Armstrong's The Art of Preserving Health: Eighteenth-Century Sensibility in Practice
by Adam BuddJohn Armstrong's 2000-line poem The Art of Preserving Health was among the most popular works of eighteenth-century literature and medicine. It was among the first to popularize Scottish medical ideas concerning emotional and anatomical sensibility to British readers, doing so through the then-fashionable georgic style. Within three years of its publication in 1744, it was in its third edition, and by 1795 it commanded fourteen editions printed in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Benjamin Franklin's shop in Philadelphia. Maintaining its place amongst more famous works of the Enlightenment, this poem was read well into the nineteenth century, remaining in print in English, French, and Italian. It remained a tribute to sustained interest in eighteenth-century sensibility, long after its medical advice had become obsolete and the nervous complaints it depicted became unfashionable. Adam Budd's critical edition includes a comprehensive biographical and textual introduction, and explanatory notes highlighting the contemporary significance of Armstrong's classical, medical, and social references. Included in his introduction are discussions of Armstrong's innovative medical training in charity hospitals and his close associations with the poet James Thomson and the bookseller Andrew Millar, evidence for the poem's wide appeal, and a compelling argument for the poem's anticipation of sensibility as a dominant literary mode. Budd also offers background on the 'new physiology' taught at Edinburgh, as well as an explanation for why a Scottish-trained physician newly arrived in London was forced to write poetry to supplement his medical income. This edition also includes annotated excerpts from the key literary and medical works of the period, including poetry, medical prose, and georgic theory. Readers will come away convinced of the poem's significance as a uniquely engaging perspective on the place of poetry, medicine, the body, and the book trade in the literary history of eighteenth-century sensibility.
John Aubrey, My Own Life
by Ruth ScurrBorn on the brink of the modern world, John Aubrey was witness to the great intellectual and political upheavals of the seventeenth century. He knew everyone of note in England--writers, philosophers, mathematicians, doctors, astrologers, lawyers, statesmen--and wrote about them all, leaving behind a great gift to posterity: a compilation of biographical information titled Brief Lives, which in a strikingly modest and radical way invented the art of biography.Aubrey was born in Wiltshire, England, in 1626. The reign of Queen Elizabeth and, earlier, the dissolution of the monasteries were not too far distant in memory during his boyhood. He lived through England's Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the brief rule of Oliver Cromwell and his son, and the restoration of Charles II. Experiencing these constitutional crises and regime changes, Aubrey was impassioned by the preservation of traces of Ancient Britain, of English monuments, manor houses, monasteries, abbeys, and churches. He was a natural philosopher, an antiquary, a book collector, and a chronicler of the world around him and of the lives of his friends, both men and women. His method of writing was characteristic of his manner: modest, self-deprecating, witty, and concerned above all with the collection of facts that would otherwise be lost to time.John Aubrey, My Own Life is an extraordinary book about the first modern biographer, which reimagines what biography can be. This intimate diary of Aubrey's days is composed of his own words, collected, collated, and enlarged upon by Ruth Scurr in an act of meticulous scholarship and daring imagination. Scurr's biography honors and echoes Aubrey's own innovations in the art of biography. Rather than subject his life to a conventional narrative, Scurr has collected the evidence--the remnants of a life from manuscripts, letters, and books--and arranged it chronologically, modernizing words and spellings, and adding explanations when necessary, with sources provided in the extensive endnotes. Here are Aubrey's intricate drawings of Stonehenge and the ancient Avebury stones; Aubrey on Charles I's execution ("On this day, the King was executed. It was bitter cold, so he wore two heavy shirts, lest he should shiver and seem afraid"); and Aubrey on antiquity ("Matters of antiquity are like the light after sunset--clear at first--but by and by crepusculum--the twilight--comes--then total darkness"). From the darkness, Scurr has wrested a vibrant, intimate account of the life of an ingenious man.
John Audubon and the World of Birds for Kids: His Life and Works, with 21 Activities (For Kids series #76)
by Michael Elsohn RossJohn James Audubon's passion for birds inspired a national movement to protect birds and their habitats. As a child, John would often skip school to roam the countryside. He collected bird nests, unique stones, bits of moss, and other items of interest and developed his talent for creating dramatic bird portraits and skills for observing them in the wild. Using his abilities as an acute observer, skilled writer, and exceptional artist, Audubon wrote and illustrated a book, Birds of America. Cataloging all these creatures took enormous time and effort—but even more difficult was finding a way to publish it. To make his book a reality he had to persuade wealthy investors to support his dream. The stories of his adventures pursuing the unique birds of the America captured the imagination of audiences. Audubon became a larger-than-life figure and dubbed himself "the American Woodsman." Years after his death his artwork is still considered a major accomplishment that inspired a greater interest in American birdlife.John Audubon and the World of Birds for Kids includes 21 hands-on activities and valuable resources for budding ornithologists hiking in his footsteps.
John Bale and Religious Conversion in Reformation England (Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World #11)
by Oliver WortFocusing on the life and work of the evangelical reformer John Bale (1485–1563), Wort presents a study of conversion in the sixteenth century.
John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal (Southern Biography Series)
by Thomas SettlesOf all the major figures of the Civil War era, Confederate general John Bankhead Magruder is perhaps the least understood. The third-ranking officer in Virginia's forces behind Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, Magruder left no diary, no completed memoirs, no will, not even a family Bible. There are no genealogical records and very few surviving personal papers. Unsurprisingly, then, much existing literature about Magruder contains incorrect information. In John Bankhead Magruder, an exhaustive biography that reflects more than thirty years of painstaking archival research, Thomas M. Settles remedies the many factual inaccuracies surrounding this enigmatic man and his military career.Settles traces Magruder's family back to its seventeenth-century British American origins, describes his educational endeavors at the University of Virginia and West Point, and details his early military career and his leading role as an artillerist in the war with Mexico. Tall, handsome, and flamboyant, Magruder earned the nickname "Prince John" from his army friends and was known for his impeccable manners and social brilliance. When Virginia seceded in April of 1861, Prince John resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and offered his services to the Confederacy. Magruder won the opening battle of the Civil War at Big Bethel. Later, in spite of severe shortages of weapons and supplies and a lack of support from Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, Samuel Cooper, and Joseph E. Johnston, Prince John, with just 13,600 men, held his position on the Peninsula for a month against George B. McClellan's 105,000-man Federal army. This successful stand, at a time when Richmond was exceedingly vulnerable, provided, according to Settles, John Magruder's greatest contribution to the Confederacy.Following the Seven Days' battles, however, his commanders harshly criticized Magruder for being too slow at Savage Station, then too rash at Malvern Hill and they transferred him to command the District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. In Texas, he skillfully recaptured the port of Galveston in early 1863 and held it for the Confederacy until the end of the war. After the war, he joined the Confederate exodus to Mexico but eventually returned to the United States, living in New York City and New Orleans before settling in Houston, where he died on February 18, 1871.John Bankhead Magruder offers fresh insight into many aspects of the general's life and legacy, including his alleged excesses, his family relationships, and the period between Magruder's death and his memorialization into the canon of Lost Cause mythology. With engaging prose and impressive research, Settles brings this vibrant Civil War figure to life.
John Banville’s Narcissistic Fictions: The Spectral Self
by Mark O’ConnellIn reading Banville's novels through the work of key psychoanalytical theorists, John Banville's Narcissistic Fictions brings together apparently disparate thematic strands - missing twins, shame, false identities - and presents these as manifestations of a central concern with narcissism.
John Bartlow Martin
by Ray E. BoomhowerDuring the 1940s and 1950s, one name, John Bartlow Martin, dominated the pages of the "big slicks," the Saturday Evening Post, LIFE, Harper's, Look, and Collier's. A former reporter for the Indianapolis Times, Martin was one of a handful of freelance writers able to survive solely on this writing. Over a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his peers lauded him as "the best living reporter," the "ablest crime reporter in America," and "one of America's premier seekers of fact." His deep and abiding concern for the working class, perhaps a result of his upbringing, set him apart from other reporters. Martin was a key speechwriter and adviser to the presidential campaigns of many prominent Democrats from 1950 into the 1970s, including those of Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and George McGovern. He served as U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic during the Kennedy administration and earned a small measure of fame when FCC Chairman Newton Minow introduced his description of television as "a vast wasteland" into the nation's vocabulary.
John Bascom and the Origins of the Wisconsin Idea
by J. David HoevelerIn the Progressive Era of American history, the state of Wisconsin gained national attention for its innovative economic and political reforms. Amidst this ferment, the "Wisconsin Idea" was popularized--the idea that a public university should improve the lives of people beyond the borders of its campus. Governor Robert La Follette routinely consulted with University of Wisconsin researchers to devise groundbreaking programs and legislation. Although the Wisconsin Idea is often attributed to a 1904 speech by Charles Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin, David Hoeveler argues that it originated decades earlier, in the creative and fertile mind of John Bascom. A philosopher, theologian, and sociologist, Bascom deeply influenced a generation of students at the University of Wisconsin, including La Follette and Van Hise. Hoeveler documents how Bascom drew concepts from German idealism, liberal Protestantism, and evolutionary theory, transforming them into advocacy for social and political reform. He was a champion of temperance, women's rights, and labor, all of which brought him controversy as president of the university from 1874 to 1887. In a way unmatched by any leader of a major American university in his time, Bascom outlined a social gospel that called for an expanded role for state governments and universities as agencies of moral improvement. Hoeveler traces the intellectual history of the Wisconsin Idea from the nineteenth century to such influential Progressive Era thinkers as Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons, who believed university researchers should be a vital source of expertise for government and citizens.
John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General
by Stephen M. HoodWINNER of the 2014 ALBERT CASTEL BOOK AWARD and the 2014 WALT WHITMAN AWARDJohn Bell Hood was one of the Confederacys most successfuland enigmaticgenerals. He died at 48 after a brief illness in August of 1879, leaving behind the first draft of his memoirs Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies. Published posthumously the following year, the memoirs immediately became as controversial as their author. A careful and balanced examination of these controversies, however, coupled with the recent discovery of Hoods personal papers (which were long considered lost) finally sets the record straight in John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General.Outlived by most of his critics, Hoods published version of many of the major events and controversies of his Confederate military career were met with scorn and skepticism. Some described his memoirs as nothing more than a polemic against his arch-rival Joseph E. Johnston. These unflattering opinions persisted throughout the decades and reached their nadir in 1992, when an influential author described Hoods memoirs as merely a bitter, misleading, and highly distorted treatise replete with distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications. Without any personal papers to contradict them, many historians and writers portrayed Hood as an inept and dishonest opium addict and a conniving, vindictive cripple of a man. One writer went so far as to brand him a fool with a license to kill his own men. What most readers dont know is that nearly all of these authors misused sources, ignored contrary evidence, and/or suppressed facts sympathetic to Hood.Stephen M. Sam Hood, a distant relative of the general, embarked on a meticulous forensic study of the common perceptions and controversies of his famous kinsman. His careful examination of the original sources utilized to create the broadly accepted facts about John Bell Hood uncovered startlingly poor scholarship by some of the most well-known and influential historians of the 20th and 21st centuries. These discoveries, coupled with his access to a large cache of recently discovered Hood papersmany penned by generals and other officers who served with Hoodconfirm Hoods account that originally appeared in his memoir and resolve, for the first time, some of the most controversial aspects of Hoods long career.Blindly accepting historical truths without vigorous challenge, cautions one historian, is a perilous path to understanding real history. The shocking revelations in John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General will forever change our perceptions of Hood as both a man and a general, and those who set out to shape his legacy.
John Bell Hood: A Bid For Fame
by LTC Daniel C. WarrenJohn Bell Hood was appointed to the United States Military Academy from Kentucky and graduated 44th in a class of 52 in July 1853. The next eight years were spent in infantry duties in California and cavalry service in Texas. With the outbreak of the Civil War Hood resigned his commission and entered the Confederate Army as a resident of Texas.During the Peninsular Campaign, Hood actively sought opportunities for combat and established a reputation as an offensively-minded, daring combat leader. He received favorable mentions in official reports, especially at Gaines' Mill, though taking heavy casualties. At Second Manassas, it became necessary for the Corps commander, Longstreet, to caution him against over-rapid advancement. He received a wound in the left arm at Gettysburg after protesting the orders which he received to advance on .Little Round Top, Upon recovery he went west with Longstreet, but lost his right leg from a wound at Chickamauga.Despite his incapacitating wounds, which necessitated his being strapped to a horse in order to ride, Hood was promoted to lieutenant general and sent as a Corps commander to the Army of Tennessee. During his service under Johnston, Hood systematically undermined the latter's already tenuous relationship with Richmond, He was named a full general and replaced Johnston as commander of the Army of Tennessee July 18, 1864. In late 1864 he invaded Tennessee, an operation which culminated in the total destruction of his army at Nashville in December 1864. He was subsequently relieved of command at his own request.Hood's career is characterized by ambition, bravery, and the use of influential friends to gain positions of high responsibility. While his tactical conceptions were sound, they failed at higher levels of command because of his inability to work with subordinates. On various occasions he circumvented or ignored his own superiors.
John Bell Hood’s Division In The Battle Of Chickamauga: A Historical Analysis [Illustated Edition]
by Major Kyle J. FoleyIllustrated with 23 maps and plans of the campaign and engagements at Chickamauga.This thesis is a historical analysis and assessment of Major General John Bell Hood's Division during the Battle of Chickamauga. In early July 1863, the Confederate Army suffered two major defeats, Vicksburg and Gettysburg, where the division suffered many casualties, including Hood. Hood's Division earned a reputation as the best division in the Army of Northern Virginia. This division was selected to reinforce General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee, and his campaign to defeat the Federal Army of the Cumberland, under the command of Major General William Rosecrans. Their reputation preceded them with high expectations. Chickamauga was the division's first major battle in the western theater.The thesis begins with brief pre-Chickamauga biographies of Hood and his brigade commanders; Brigadier General Evander McIver Law, Brigadier General Henry L. Benning, and Brigadier General Jerome B. Robertson. Next, the circumstances that brought the division to the Battle of Chickamauga and their journey to northern Georgia will be discussed. Thereafter, a close examination of the engagements conducted from 18-20 September 1863 will be discussed. Finally, an analysis will be presented to how the leaders of Hood's Division performed during the Battle of Chickamauga, and draws conclusions as to the proximate causes of their performances. These causes focus on the divisional leaders and their decisions.
John Bellairs Mystery: The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer
by Brad StricklandLewis's hopes for a peaceful summer vacation are shattered as one accident after another plagues him. Is all his bad luck really just a coincidence? Or does it have something to do with the mysterious hooded figure he keeps seeing?
John Berger's Ways of Seeing (The Macat Library)
by Emmanouil KalkanisWays of Seeing is a key art-historical work that continues to provoke widespread debate. It is comprised of seven different essays, three of which are pictorial and the other containing texts and images. Berger first examines the relationship between seeing and knowing, discussing how our assumptions affect how we see a painting. He moves on to consider the role of women in artwork, particularly regarding the female nude. The third essay deals with oil painting looking at the relationship between subjects and ownership. Finally, Berger addresses the idea of ownership in a consumerist society, discussing the power of imagery in advertising, with particular regards to photography.
John Billington, Friend of Squanto
by Clyde Robert BullaA young Pilgrim boy is always causing trouble for Plymouth Colony until one day his mischief results in more friendly relations with the Indians.
John Boardman on the Parthenon (Pocket Perspectives #2)
by John BoardmanBritain's most distinguished historian of ancient Greek art recounts what the Parthenon and its sculptures meant to the citizens of fifth-century BCE Athens. Surprising, questioning, challenging, enriching: the Pocket Perspectives series presents timeless works by writers and thinkers who have shaped the conversation across the arts, visual culture, and history. Celebrating the undiminished vitality of their ideas today, these covetable and collectable little books embody the best of Thames & Hudson.
John Brown
by W. E. B. Du BoisContains the original (1909) edition of the text and six related documents. The life of one of America's most well-known and controversial abolitionists is examined by one of its most brilliant black intellectuals and activists. Du Bois (1868-1963) defended Brown from accusations as a demagogue and radical, suggesting that his greatest crime was that he demanded freedom for the oppressed.
John Brown
by W. E. DuBoisFirst published in 1909, W.E.B. Du Bois's biography of abolitionist John Brown is a literary and historical classic. With a rare combination of scholarship and passion, Du Bois defends Brown against all detractors who saw him as a fanatic, fiend, or traitor. Brown emerges as a rich personality, fully understandable as an unusual leader with a deeply religious outlook and a devotion to the cause of freedom for the slave.This new edition is enriched with an introduction by John David Smith and with supporting documents relating to Du Bois's correspondence with his publisher.