Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Henry Adams and the Making of America

3.7/5 ( ratings)

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.

Language: English

Pages: 480

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Release: September 14, 2005

ISBN: 0618134301

ISBN 13: 9780618134304

Henry Adams and the Making of America

3.7/5 ( ratings)

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.

Language: English

Pages: 480

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Release: September 14, 2005

ISBN: 0618134301

ISBN 13: 9780618134304

More books from Garry Wills

James Madison

3.8/5 ( ratings)

What Paul Meant

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Scoundrel Time

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Why I Am a Catholic

3.5/5 ( ratings)

Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Saint Augustine

3.5/5 ( ratings)

What the Gospels Meant

3.8/5 ( ratings)

What the Qur'an Meant: And Why It Matters

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Christian Science

3.5/5 ( ratings)

The Soul of Politics: Beyond "Religious Right" and "Secular Left"

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Under God

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Martial's Epigrams: A Selection

3.7/5 ( ratings)

A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Under God: Religion and American Politics

2.4/5 ( ratings)

Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

Jack Ruby

Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

4.3/5 ( ratings)

A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government

Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

Rate this book!

Write a review?