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Henry Adams (1) (1838–1918)

Auteur van The Education of Henry Adams

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78+ Werken 6,734 Leden 86 Besprekingen Favoriet van 12 leden

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Henry Adams was born in Boston, Massachusetts on February 16, 1838, the son of American diplomat Charles Francis Adams and grandson of President John Quincy Adams. Educated at Harvard University, he worked in Washington, D.C., as his father's secretary before embarking on a career in journalism and toon meer later in teaching. A prominent American historian, he wrote several important historical works. His works include The Education of Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, Esther: A Novel, and Democracy: An American Novel. He died on March 27, 1918 at the age of 80. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder
Fotografie: Marian Hooper Adams

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Werken van Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams (1907) 2,809 exemplaren
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904) 1,101 exemplaren
Democracy: An American Novel (1880) 467 exemplaren
John Randolph (1882) 73 exemplaren
Esther (1884) 52 exemplaren
Henry Adams: Selected Letters (1992) 38 exemplaren
The War of 1812 (1999) 36 exemplaren
Chapters of Erie (1956) 32 exemplaren
A Henry Adams Reader (1958) 22 exemplaren
The life of Albert Gallatin (1879) 14 exemplaren
Democracy and Esther, Two Novels (1961) 10 exemplaren
The Tendency of History (1928) 5 exemplaren
Historical Essays (1891) 5 exemplaren
Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (2004) 4 exemplaren
The life of George Cabot Lodge (2015) 3 exemplaren
The Works of Henry Adams (2010) 2 exemplaren
The Modern Library 1 exemplaar
Letters from Japan 1 exemplaar
Lettres des mers du sud (1974) 1 exemplaar

Gerelateerde werken

The Best American Essays of the Century (2000) — Medewerker — 774 exemplaren
Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology (2004) — Medewerker — 297 exemplaren
The Civil War: The First Year Told By Those Who Lived It (2011) — Medewerker — 241 exemplaren
The Portable Conservative Reader (1982) — Medewerker — 210 exemplaren
Modern American Memoirs (1995) — Medewerker — 189 exemplaren
The Civil War: The Third Year Told by Those Who Lived It (2013) — Medewerker — 145 exemplaren
The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Concise Edition (2003) — Medewerker — 68 exemplaren
Classic Essays in English (1961) — Medewerker — 22 exemplaren

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Less a mere work of history than it is a meditation on it, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres starts out by walking the reader through those two famous French sites before broadening out into a more general discussion of the high medieval mind and ending with extended discussions of the thought of figures such as Peter Abélard and Thomas Aquinas.

First published in 1904 as a kind of guidebook for younger family members to bring with them to Europe, this book benefits from the fact that it was written by the kind of rich, connected nineteenth-century dude (Henry Adams' paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were both U.S. presidents) who had the means and time to spend months travelling western Europe and lingering over historic sites. Adams knows a lot about not just Mont-Saint-Michel and the cathedral of Chartres, but also many other medieval ecclesiastical buildings!

Adams also clearly felt unconstrained by the kinds of qualms that later historians would feel about making sweeping statements about their subjects. He is all wild claims ("In no well-regulated community, under a proper system of police, could the Virgin feel at home, and the same thing may be said of most other saints as well as sinners") and stuff that sounds nice and poetic but doesn't really mean anything ("The man who wanders into the twelfth century is lost, unless he can grow prematurely young") and hilarious swipes at some major historical figures (Héloise of Argenteuil was "by French standards, worth at least a dozen Abélards, if only because she called Saint Bernard a false apostle"; Abélard "taught philosophy to [Héloise] not so much because he believed in philosophy or in her as because he believed in himself").

I found this all deeply entertaining. It's not good history—not only has some of what Adams got to say here been superseded by later research, but it's all built on a whole foundation of weirdo paternalistic sexism and more than a smattering of antisemitism—and I wouldn't recommend reading it as such. For a variety of reasons, historians aren't really trained to write like Adams anymore, but I do feel a little envious about the leeway Adams had to just say fuck it and write about a vibe. If he's still to be read today, it should be for that.
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siriaeve | 12 andere besprekingen | Dec 11, 2023 |
Although parts are rather tedious reading it was very interesting to learn that the New England states were ready to leave the union over the trade embargo ordered to attempt to damage France and England for seizing US ships. An earlier possible split was planned by Aaron Burr, who wanted the western states to form a separate nation.
 
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ritaer | 4 andere besprekingen | Aug 5, 2023 |
If you know a lot about the history of the second half of the 19th century, you will probably enjoy this book much more than the casual and the curious, as Adams does a lot of name-dropping without any kind of footnotes or contextual explanation. I was especially interested in Adams' description of his time as private secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, Lincoln's ambassador in England during the Civil War, and the diplomatic and political machinations that ocurred while trying to secure Britain's official neutrality.

There are some slow parts of the book, and his attempt to conclude with an overarching theory of history, detailed in scientific language, is unsuccessful in hindsight. Adams' ideas about the accelerating progress of technology and thought is really the culmination of Englightenment thinking, which would be disavowed by the modernists ten years after his death. Perhaps Adams would have revised his thinking if he had lived to see the cataclysm of 1914, and it is ironic how in the last lines of the book he wistfully hopes for a centenial reunion with his best friends King and Hay, to observe the progress and peace that humanity had created. The year: 1938.
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jonbrammer | 43 andere besprekingen | Jul 1, 2023 |
 
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ddonahue | 43 andere besprekingen | Nov 30, 2022 |

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Werken
78
Ook door
13
Leden
6,734
Populariteit
#3,637
Waardering
3.9
Besprekingen
86
ISBNs
471
Talen
8
Favoriet
12

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