Henry Adams: Novels Mont Saint Michel The Education (Democracy: An American Novel, Esther: A Novel, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, the Education of Henry Adams, Poems)

Henry Adams: Novels Mont Saint Michel The Education (Democracy: An American Novel, Esther: A Novel, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, the Education of Henry Adams, Poems)
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Henry Adams, Democracy, Esther, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, The Education of Henry Adams

Greatest hits

one of the most brilliant minds in American literature

Henry Adams: Novels Mont Saint Michel The Education (Democracy: An American Novel, Esther: A Novel, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, the Education of Henry Adams, Poems)
Henry Adams
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Henry Adams and the Making of America

ASIN: 0940450127

Book Description

The major works of Henry Adams, one of the most powerful writers of the late nineteenth century, collected in one volume for the first time. Contains "The Education of Henry Adams" and "Mont Saint Michel and Chartres," his remarkable works of nonfiction combining philosophical and historical speculation with autobiographical musings on his famous heritage. Also includes his two novels of American politics and religion, "Democracy" and "Esther."

Customer Reviews:

Henry Adams, Democracy, Esther, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, The Education of Henry Adams.......2007-02-13

Henry Adams should be required reading for all US students. This version of his writings - Library of America series includes all his best writings in a small book. Amazon delivered as agreed.

Greatest hits.......2003-01-21

The Library of America is one of the best organizations. Here at last are both novels, his interesting autobiography, and Mont St Michel all under one roof.

"Democracy" is one of the best political novels of all time and speaking as a denizen of the nation's capital, very little has changed. Esther is attempt deal with the "woman question." Clearly the inspiration of both books is Mrs. Henry Adams. Known as "Voltaire in petticoats" (Henry James), she later tragically took her own life following a period of depression. The death of his wife led to Henry Adams' retirement from public life. This subject is covered in Ernest Samuels' wonderful biography (which I also recommend).

I suggest a look at his biography since the subject of Marion Clover Adams is avoided entirely in "The Education of Henry Adams." Henry Adams may not discuss his wife, but he does touch on nearly everything else of importance in his autobiography. "Growing up Adams," life in Europe with Garibaldi's forces, life at the British legation in London during the Civil War are all addressed. The best and probably the most key chapter in the book is the one entitled "The Virgin and Dynamo." Adams uses the 1876 cenntenial fair as a departure to meditate of the impact of the industrial revolution. Adams believed with the growth of technology that man would somehow outgrow the simple humanity of the Middle Ages (it would have been interesting if Adams had lived long enough to meet someone like Carl Jung to see what he would have to say on this subject!). One of the foremost historians (the Library of America has also issued the history of Jefferson and Madison's Administrations, which is a classic), Adams became interested in the Middle Ages and his survey of the two great cathedrals of France Chartes and Mont St. Michel is the final book in the volume. I cannot recommend this book too highly, it is a must for all fans of Henry Adams and those who would like to experience him for the first time.

one of the most brilliant minds in American literature.......2000-06-13

While Adams novels (Democracy and Esther) may be lightweight, the other two works included in this volume are two of the best non-fiction American books ever. Adams has the kind of intellect that seems capable of encompassing everything. Like Joseph Campbell or Harold Bloom, Adams often leaves the reader in awe of how much he knows and how he is able to make the connections that so clearly illuminate everything he touches upon. This is one of my favorite volumes in the Library of America series, and I know that anyone who appreciates intelligence, wit, and charm in a writer will enjoy reading it.

Exiled Royalties: Melville and the Life We Imagine

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Exiled Royalties: Melville and the Life We Imagine
Robert Milder
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0195142322

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Exiled Royalties is a literary/biographical study of the course of Melville's career from his experience in Polynesia through his retirement from the New York Custom House and his composition of three late volumes of poetry and Billy Budd, Sailor. Conceived separately but narratively and thematically intertwined, the ten essays in the book are rooted in a belief that "Melville's work," as Charles Olson said, "must be left in his own 'life,'" which for Milder means primarily his spiritual, psychological, and vocational life. Four of the ten essays deal with Melville's life and work after his novelistic career ended with the The Confidence-Man in 1857. The range of issues addressed in the essays includes Melville's attitudes toward society, history, and politics, from broad ideas about democracy and the course of Western civilization to responses to particular events like the Astor Place Riots and the Civil War; his feeling about sexuality and, throughout the book, about religion; his relationship to past and present writers, especially to the phases of Euro-American Romanticism, post-Romanticism, and nascent Modernism; his relationship to his wife, Lizzie, to Hawthorne, and to his father, all of whom figured in the crisis that made for Pierre. The title essay, "Exiled Royalties," takes its origin from Ishmael's account of "the larger, darker, deeper part of Ahab"--Melville's mythic projection of a "larger, darker, deeper part" of himself. How to live nobly in spiritual exile--to be godlike in the perceptible absence of God--was a lifelong preoccupation for Melville, who, in lieu of positive belief, transposed the drama of his spiritual life to literature. The ways in which this impulse expressed itself through Melville's forty-five year career, interweaving itself with his personal life and the life of the nation and shaping both the matter and manner of his work, is the unifying subject of Exiled Royalties.

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Democracy- An American Novel
Henry Adams
Manufacturer: Echo Library
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Binding: Paperback

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States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel

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States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel
Elizabeth Barnes
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Explores the extent to which sympathy and sentiment--through the representation of the family--are increasingly employed to construct the notion of a politically affective state in philosophical, political and literary texts. The book offers fresh interpretations of classic and lesser-known works, from Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple to Herman Melville's Billy Budd.

Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times

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Rabid, lying paganism RUN AMOK
Down with lobbyists!
Is Bill Moyers really a Bleeding Heart Liberal?
A Man of Our Times
excellent journalist, a true american patriot

Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times
Bill Moyers
Manufacturer: New Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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Bill Moyers's vision for America in this crucial election year.

"Our nation can no more survive as half democracy and half oligarchy than it could survive 'half slave and half free.'—from Moyers on America

Over the years millions of Americans have invited Bill Moyers into their homes. His television programs—covering topics ranging from American history, politics, and religion to the role of media and the world of ideas—have made him one of America's most recognized and honored journalists. In these pages, Moyers presents, for the first time, a powerful statement of his own personal beliefs—political and moral. Combining illuminating forays into American history with candid comments on today's politics, Moyers delivers perceptive and trenchant insights into the American experience.

From his early years as a Texas journalist to his role as one of the organizers of the Peace Corps, top assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, publisher of Newsday, senior correspondent and analyst for CBS News, and producer of many of public television's groundbreaking series, Moyers has been actively engaged in some of the most volatile episodes of the past fifty years. Drawing from this practical experience, he demonstrates a unique understanding of how American politics works and an enduring faith in the nation's promises and possibilities. Whether reflecting on today's climate of megamedia concentration, rampant corporate scandals, or religious and political upheavals, Moyers on America recovers the hopes of the past to establish their relevance for the present.

Customer Reviews:

Rabid, lying paganism RUN AMOK.......2007-08-27

Listen to Chris Wallace's closing remarks on Bill Moyers on Fox News Sunday (8/26/07) and you will understand who and what we are dealing with in Bill Moyers - a radical, pagan, left wing, bomb throwing crazy!!!

Down with lobbyists!.......2007-06-28

Both Moyers and Whitman have helped to reaffirm my thoughts on where I stand in the political spectrum. I just recently decided that I would label myself as an independent. My belief was that as an independent I would not already be swayed to one party or the other and therefore would have less bias in choosing whom I wanted to vote for. So far so good even though I still hold some connection to the Republican camp, of which Whitman has helped me see that there is a large moderate side to the Republicans. Why is it that people become so connected to a group that they don't see what is really best for our country? Why is it that winning an argument is more important than governing for the people? Moyers does a good job of describing some of these issues in his articles and speeches. Then he is able to go beyond politics to journalism, friendships, and death. Even though he does cut down the current administration at times these are thoughts and issues that should be of concern to both sides.

Is Bill Moyers really a Bleeding Heart Liberal?.......2007-02-26

If scratching the issues on the surface is to your liking then "Moyers On American" is an exceptional glimpse at the failings of media. But if you are looking for the crux of the matter then look elsewhere because Moyers belongs to the gatekeepers of America.
The problem I had with this book was that Moyers never connects the dots. He just pontificates about how the media doesn't report the real in-depth stories when actually he doesn't either. By avoiding the fact that the CIA indirectly funds NPR, CPB, and PBS (the station he works for) he does his readers a disservice. Moyers misrepresents himself as a man of the people. There is nothing bourgeois about this man.
In the book he quotes Thomas Paine, but one has to ascertain that Paine really believed in what he said in the pamphlet "Common Sense," unlike Moyers who promotes the New World Order's left/right paradigm. When I was finished reading this book I felt cheated. Surface history is not enough. I wanted to know whose in control of the economy, the media, and the government. If Moyers really wanted to do an in-depth investigation he would have climbed the corporate pyramid, and revealed that families such as the Rothschilds, and the Rockefellers control certain aspects of the world through institutions such as the Bilderberg Group, The Trilateral Commission, The Federal Reserve Bank, and the Council on Foreign Relations. By circumventing around this fact is yellow journalism.
Gil Scott-Heron said "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," and if Moyers and many others continue to gate-keep, it sure won't be televised. Their actions will continue to keep us marginalized in a state of apraxia.
The most significant part was the end. His historical look at Lyndon Johnson's achievements and failures is the only redeeming subject that made this long-winded book worth reading. I've read 500 page books faster than I read this one, but what I will states is that he is a free-flowing writer/speaker, it's just too bad that he wasted his talent on dry-as-dust surface tripe.

A Man of Our Times.......2006-07-13

One thing when you get when you read Bill Moyers is a man who speaks from his soul. This journalist and minister laments the disappearance of a free and diverse press being taken over by conglomerates that filter our information with a singular point of view.

He is a populist who believes that our elected representatives are supposed to represent the people who vote for them, not the corporations who give contributions to them. In any other place that is called bribery. In Congress, it is called a contribution.

Equally disconcerting to Moyers is his perception that Americans no longer thirst for the news and the political decisions that affect their lives on a daily basis. Americans care less even about the information that is filtered to them.

I was unable to connect some of the experiences he wrote here to his central theme, but I was always able to imagine the words on the page being spoken by the man with a calm, reassuring voice, the same man who received more than thirty years of Emmy and other awards for outstanding journalism.

Naturally, there is always someone like Bernie Goldberg who saw fit to place this patriotic American and gentleman on his list of 100 people who are ruining America. But, it took no time to feel good again. All I had to do was consider the source. (You don't make comparisons between a Goldberg and a Moyers.)

Read Moyers, watch Moyers every time you can. National treasures are hard to come by.

excellent journalist, a true american patriot.......2006-04-23

fantastic book. moyers is an unbelievabel journalist and a true american citizen. he has served his country in government and in public life. a wonderful writer and excellent speaker.

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Democracy, an American novel
Henry Adams
Manufacturer: Hard Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1406954039
Release Date: 2006-11-03

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A Must Read for Anyone Who is Rabid for Politics and American History!
"I must know whether America is right or wrong."
Political satire that is still relevant today
An epitaph: It Had Good Intentions...
an amusing take on politics

Democracy: An American Novel
Henry Adams
Manufacturer: Plume
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0452009421

Amazon.com

First published anonymously in 1880, the mother of all (American) political novels is the story of Madeleine Lee, a young widow who comes to Washington, DC, to understand the workings of government. "What she wanted was POWER." During the course of the novel, she sees enough of power and its corruptions to last her a lifetime.

Book Description

An immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1880, the anonymously penned Democracy prompted widespread speculation and guessing games as to its author’s identity. It is the story of Mrs. Lightfoot Lee, a society widow, and Silas Ratcliffe, the most influential member of the Senate, who, throughout the novel, pursues Mrs. Lee while at the same time battling her for power. Set in Washington in the 1870s, Democracy presents a scathing and incisive look at the intricate inner workings of politics and corruption that remains relevant today.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the 1880 first edition and includes a contemporary review from The Atlantic Monthly.

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FOR reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington. She was in excellent health, but she said that the climate would do her good. In New York she had troops of friends, but she suddenly became eager to see again the very small number of those who lived on the Potomac. It was only to her closest intimates that she honestly acknowledged herself to be tortured by ennui. Since her husband's death, five years before, she had lost her taste for New York society; she had felt no interest in the price of stocks, and very little in the men who dealt in them; she had become serious. What was it all worth, this wilderness of men and women as monotonous as the brown stone houses they lived in? In her despair she had resorted to desperate measures. She had read philosophy in the original German, and the more she read, the more she was disheartened that so much culture should lead to nothing - nothing.

Customer Reviews:

A Must Read for Anyone Who is Rabid for Politics and American History!.......2005-10-25

Excellent. Simply excellent!

"I must know whether America is right or wrong.".......2005-05-25

Henry Adams, the direct descendent of two presidents, published his novel, Democracy, anonymously in 1880. About one hundred years had passed since the launching of the great American political experiment and through his novel Adams takes stock of its results.

The novel also seems to be a catharsis for Adams, an internal monologue explaining to himself why, burdened by society's considerable expectations and helped by powerful family connections, he eschews a career in elective politics.

Adams speaks through the novel's protagonist, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee, and sometimes through Mr. Nathan Gore, a literary man. Other personages are caricatures, representing types of people, such as the obvious Mr. Hartbeest Schneidekoupon, a rich, amateur politician, whose German last name means "coupon clipper," a nineteenth-century term for the idle rich. Old World diplomats, duty-bound officials, skirt chasers, sanctimonious reformers and down-in-the-dirt politicians are Mrs. Lee's and Mr. Gore's foils as they visit Washington to examine the engine room of democracy.

Corruption, the role of money in politics and the ignorance of powerful politicians give Adams concern for the health of the American political system. These concerns are woven throughout the novel's action. "Surely something can be done to check corruption. Are we for ever to be at the mercy of thieves and ruffians? Is respectable government impossible in a democracy?" asks Adams through Mrs. Lee. In light of these obvious defects, Adams wonders if America's great experiment is right or wrong.

Adams' picture of 1880 Washington politics contrasts starkly with the noble principles debated by the country's founders and enshrined in its founding documents. Today's politicians, according to Adams, only give lip service to principles. Lofty ideas are only useful when they help you get what you want. Politics has become a bazaar, where money reigns. As Senator Ratcliffe, a corrupt Washington power broker, states: "Public men ... cannot be dressing themselves to-day in Washington's old clothes. If Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways or lose his next election."

While a foreign diplomat who claims intimate knowledge with world corruption predicts that Washington will in one-hundred years become the world's most corrupt city, Adams doesn't despair for democracy. As Nathan Gore states: "I grant it is an experiment, but it is the only direction society can take that is worth its taking; .... Every other possible step is backward, and I do not care to repeat the past." Adams concludes, however, that as a man for whom principles are important, he's not suited for a career in elective politics.

While Adams' novel was written about one hundred years after the United States' founding, another hundred years has passed. Adams was a knowledgeable and perceptive political observer of his time. A reader might pause to ask: What's changed? Are Adams' observations still relevant? Is his somewhat subdued enthusiasm for democracy still grounds for optimism? Is every other possible step backward?

Political satire that is still relevant today.......2002-06-03

"Democracy" is what "Primary Colors" would have been if the latter had been well-written. Like Joe Klein, Adams published his book anonymously and skewered a number of contemporary politicians (including President Rutherford B. Hayes). But Adams goes two steps further: his novel is a scathing commentary more on the American political system in general than on one administration in particular, and his characters are iconic and recognizable in any era.

In "Democracy," the nation's capital "swarms with simple-minded exhibitions of human nature; men and women curiously out of place, whom it would be cruel to ridicule and ridiculous to weep over." But Adams is not hesitant about being cruel in his portrayal of Washington's residents, and he saves his weeping for the true victims in his novel: the American people. The typical American senator combines "the utmost pragmatical self-assurance and overbearing temper with the narrowest education and meanest personal experience that ever existed in any considerable government." (Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose!)

The story concerns Madeleine Lee, an intelligent and well-meaning (if somewhat naive) New York widow, who, bored with her cosmopolitan lifestyle, travels to Washington to learn what makes the nation tick. She and her sister are quickly surrounded by a diverse group of politicians, lobbyists, and foreign diplomats, and she finds herself courted by Silas Ratcliffe, a senator with presidential aspirations whose talent "consisted in the skill with which he evaded questions of principle." During one heated (and humorous) argument about George Washington's merits, Ratcliffe sums up his view of politics: "If virtue won't answer our purpose, then we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office."

Adams's prose is almost Jamesian in its measured pacing (and this may simply bore some readers); the initial chapters are unhurried as he weaves the web of the plot and sketches his all-too-believable characters. Along the way he tosses barbed zingers at every target. The climactic passages are among the most comically riveting, emotionally intense, and morally satisfying finales I've read in a satire: as you might expect, nobody gets exactly what they want, but everyone gets what they deserve.

An epitaph: It Had Good Intentions..........2001-04-05

...Which pave the road to mediocrity, a writer's hell. Though it isn't terrible, "Democracy" is little more than a could-have-been in all respects. It has interesting ideas and competent writing, so the potential was there. The problem, as is so often the case, is in the novel's execution.

The idea that power corrupts is an old one, and it is obviously the main point of Henry Adams' novel. His intention seems to be to portray the lengths to which those in power will go to acquire more power, and how the lust for power is certain to deaden one's sense of morality. Unfortunately, Adams would have done better to write an essay on the subject rather than attempt to weave it into a fictional novel, for the author waxes too moralistic on his theme, rather than stepping back and allowing the characters to make his point for him. This does more harm than simply annoying the reader with value judgments; the story itself becomes so transparent and predictable, that it seems a mere vehicle for what soon becomes a tiresome refrain.

Perhaps this is why the characters are so lamentably flat. The descriptions Adams writes for each character seem to foreshadow complexity and development, but this soon is proven to be a false impression. Interesting as the characters might have been from their descriptions, when push comes to shove and the story continues, they remain utterly devoid of personality. Ironically, the main characters, Madeleine and Ratcliffe, are probably the most thinly developed of the entire bunch; the supporting cast is slightly more interesting, but not by much.

Another annoyance is the implausible thinking and actions of so many of the characters; for Madeleine to contemplate marrying Ratcliffe for her sister's sake is simply ridiculous. The fact that she considers her life at an end at age thirty is equally implausible, as is Sybil's attitude of careless youth at age twenty-five: in the nineteenth century, any woman of that age who was yet unmarried would have been considered an old maid, yet that is never even hinted at.

Perhaps the worst of it all was the pacing: this 300+ page book could have EASILY been half its size. It drags along without character development and without even any plot development. Worse yet, the book is centered entirely around politics, yet Adams seems hazy as to the details of those politics. Perhaps Madeleine learned a lot about American politics from her stay in Washington, but very little of this is shared with the reader. As such, the book does not even have an interesting setting to recommend itself.

In the end, it is obvious what Adams was trying to say, but by making Madeleine so careless with regard to Ratcliffe, the author fails utterly. With no temptation, there can be no sacrifice. It is unclear why the reader is expected to admire Madeleine, yet this expectation is clear enough.

To sum up...for a book about government corruption, look elsewhere. There must be something out there better than this. Anything.

an amusing take on politics.......2001-02-10

To act with entire honesty and self-respect, one should always live in a pure atmosphere, and the atmosphere of politics is impure. -Senator Silas Ratcliffe, Democracy

In his own lifetime, Henry Adams was famous first for being the grandson of John Quincy Adams, thus the great grandson of John Adams; second for his epic History of the United States During the Jefferson and Madison Administrations. It was only upon his death, in 1918, that his third person autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, was published and that his publisher revealed that Adams had written the previously anonymous novel Democracy. It is The Education which has sustained his reputation, having been named the number one book on the Modern Library list of the Top 100 Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century, but Democracy is still considered one of the better novels of American politics, though surprisingly it is currently out of print.

The novel is both a fairly typical 19th Century comedy of manners--with the widow Madeleine Lee decamping from New York to Washington DC, where she instantly becomes one of the Capital's most desirable catches--and a more serious meditation on the nature and pursuit of power in the American democracy. The widow Lee is specifically interested in Washington because it is the seat of power :

...she was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government.

. . .

What she wished to see, she thought, was the clash of interests, the interests of forty millions of people and a whole continent, centering at Washington; guided, restrained, controlled, or unrestrained and uncontrollable, by men of ordinary mould; the tremendous forces of government, and the machinery of society at work. What she wanted was POWER.

Mrs. Lee's most likely pursuer is Senator Silas Ratcliffe of Illinois, widely considered a likely future President : he sees her as a perfect First Lady and she sees him as her path to power. Through an elaborate courtship ritual and several set piece scenes (in the Senate, at the White House, at Mount Vernon, at Arlington Cemetery and at a dress ball) Adams puts his characters through their paces and affords the reader an intimate look at the rather tawdry political milieu of the 1870's. The theme that runs throughout the story is that access to power comes only through compromising one's principles, but Adams is sufficiently ambivalent about the point that we're uncertain whether he's more contemptuous of those who make the necessary deals or those who, by staying "pure," sacrifice the opportunity to influence affairs of state. Suffice it to say that the novel ends with Mrs. Lee, assumed by most critics to represent Adams himself, fleeing to Egypt, telling her sister : "Democracy has shaken my nerves to pieces."

Like his presidential forebears, Henry Adams had a realistic and therefore jaundiced view of politics, even as practiced in a democracy. The Adams's did not subscribe to the starry eyed idealism of the Jeffersonians. But they were all drawn to politics, even realizing that it was a moral quagmire. This is the fundamental dilemma of the conservative democrat, we recognize that we have to govern ourselves because we know we can't trust unelected rulers, but we also understand that our elected representatives are unlikely to be any more honest than the tyrants we threw out. This attitude is famously captured in Winston Churchill's (alleged) aphorism : "Democracy: the worst of all possible systems, but there is no other which would be better." And the unfortunate corollary is that unless relatively honorable men like the Adamses and the Churchills pursue careers in politics, the field will be left to the real scoundrels. Henry Adams doesn't offer any solutions to the dilemma, but he offers an amusing take on it.

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