Synopses & Reviews
One of our greatest historians offers a surprising new view of the greatest historian of the nineteenth century, Henry Adams.
Wills showcases Henry Adams's little-known but seminal study of the early United States and elicits from it fresh insights on the paradoxes that roil America to this day. Adams drew on his own southern fixation, his extensive foreign travel, his political service in Lincoln's White House, and much more to invent the study of history as we know it. His nine-volume chronicle of America from 1800 to 1816 established new standards for employing archival sources, firsthand reportage, eyewitness accounts, and other techniques that have become the essence of modern history.
Adams's innovations went beyond the technical; he posited an essentially ironic view of the legacy of Jefferson and Madison. As is well known, they strove to shield the young country from "foreign entanglements," a standing army, a central bank, and a federal bureaucracy, among other hallmarks of "big government." Yet by the end of their tenures they had permanently entrenched all of these things in American society. This is the "American paradox" that defines us today: the idealized desire for isolation and political simplicity battling against the inexorable growth and intermingling of political, economic, and military forces. As Wills compellingly shows, the ironies spawned two centuries ago still inhabit our foreign policy and the widening schisms over economic and social policy.
Ambitious in scope, nuanced in detail and argument, Henry Adams and the Making of America throws brilliant light on how history is made -- in both senses of the term.
Review
"A contemporary historian pays tribute to a previous one in this personal and rigorous analysis of the works of Henry Adams. . .A marvelous character sketch."
Review
"With its revisionist stance, felicitous prose and compelling argument, Wills's book charts new directions." Publishers Weekly, Starred
"A contemporary historian pays tribute to a previous one in this personal and rigorous analysis of the works of Henry Adams. . .A marvelous character sketch." Booklist, ALA
"Garry Wills brings a lucid style, imaginative analysis and the talent for historical elucidation...I unreservedly recommend this book." --Richard Lingeman The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
In Henry Adams and the Making of America, Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills makes a compelling argument for a reassessment of Henry Adams as our nations greatest historian and his History as the nonfiction prose masterpiece of the nineteenth century in America.” Adams drew on his own southern fixation, his extensive foreign travel, his political service in the Lincoln administration, and much more to invent the study of history as we know it. His nine-volume chronicle of America from 1800 to 1816 established new standards for employing archival sources, firsthand reportage, eyewitness accounts, and other techniques that have become the essence of modern history.
Ambitious in scope, nuanced in detail, Henry Adams and the Making of America throws brilliant light on the historian and the making of history.
About the Author
GARRY WILLS, a distinguished historian and critic, is the author of numerous books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln at Gettysburg, Saint Augustine, and the best-selling Why I Am a Catholic. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, he has won many awards, among them two National Book Critics Circle Awards and the 1998 National Medal for the Humanities. He is a history professor emeritus at Northwestern University.
Table of Contents
C o n t e n t s
Key to Brief Citations ix Introduction: Reading Henry Adams Forward 1
Part One: The Making of an Historian
1. Grandmother Louisa and the South 11 2. Boston Historians 33 3. Civil War Politics 49 4. Postwar Politics 72 5. Historical Method 87 6. Historical Artistry 104
Part Two: The Making of a Nation
I. JEFFERSONS TWO TERMS 1. A Peoples History: The History, Volume One 123 2. Jeffersons Success: The History, Volume One 140 3. Reaching Out: The History, Volume Two 160 4. Three Foes: The History, Volume Three 186 5. Anything but War: The History, Volume Four 216
II. MADISONS TWO TERMS 1. False Dawn: The History, Volume Five 249 2. War: The History, Volume Six 271 3. Naval History: The History, Volume Six 296 4. The Wars Second Year: The History, Volume Seven 315 5. The Wars Third Year: The History, Volume Eight 335 6. Shame and Glory: The History, Volume Eight 349 7. Peace and Nationalism: The History, Volume Nine 366 8. Nation-Making: The History, Volume Nine 381
Epilogue 395 Notes 405 Acknowledgments 427 Index 429