Synopses & Reviews
Michael O'Brien has masterfully abridged his award-winning two-volume intellectual history of the Old South, Conjectures of Order. Here he succinctly and fluidly surveys the lives and works of many significant Southern intellectuals, including John C. Calhoun, Louisa McCord, James Henley Thornwell, and George Fitzhugh. He offers a new understanding of the South by describing a place neither monolithic nor out of touch, but conflicted, mobile, and ambitious to integrate modern intellectual developments into its tense and idiosyncratic social experience.
About the Author
Michael O'Brien is professor of American intellectual history at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Jesus College, and a fellow of the British Academy. He is author or editor of several books on Southern intellectual history and, most recently, of Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon.