About this title: Published posthumously in 1918, this book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1919. In this autobiography, Adams confronts the way he was raised, asserting that he and other men of his generation were singularly unprepared for the chaos unleashed upon civilization by the economic and technical innovations as the end of the 19th century drew near. More than ...
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Binding: Unknown Binding
Publisher: The Modern library
Date Published: 1931
Description: Acceptable. Book is in acceptable condition. Red cloth hardcover. Pages are unmarked. Tanning on pages. No dust jacket. Hinges loose; soiled cover. - read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1990-10-31
ISBN-13:9780679732327ISBN:0679732322
Description: Very Good. Very good condition lightly read softback book with used stamped inside the book with the price in red ink, very clean no highlighting, underlining or notes. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Time, Inc, New York
Date Published: 1964
Description: Not Issued jacket. 1964 Time paperback, VOLUME I, in GOOD condition; no dust jacket as issued. Extremely tight binding; square with stiff cover; cover soiled; front two corners missing; clean, bright pages; no marks. 261 p. (1800) read more
Edition: 1st Printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780679732327ISBN:0679732322
Description: Good. No Dust Jacket as Issued. Ex-Library. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Good reading copy****Book shows moderate wear/ spine tight, pages clean/ covers creased; moderate edge wear/ usual library stamps and stickers/ several pages and page tips creased. read more
"Told from a point of view that makes the reader seem very distant from the life of Henry Adams- as if everything is looked at and analyzed in each particular so the story takes FOREVER to be told-and it is told without any real vigor or character to it. I was pretty bored by the second chapter, and scanned further but found the rest to be prettymuch the same. There were some interesting comments, but not much to hold my attention and interest in the life or education of Henry Adams."
"I'm intrigued by Adams's notion of himself as an 18th century man, and why this unfitted him for his time, and why this was a bad thing. Is he being modest, pessimistic, nihilistic, or was this merely a style of rhetoric from the late Victorian era? I don't know enough yet to tell.
After having finished the book, I have a sustained impression that Adams's style of writing is like an odd combination of Chesterton and Ecclesiastes--Chesterton because he writes indirectly and dialectically, and Ecclesiastes because he flirts with nihilism. Frankly, there were large swaths at the philosophical, concluding chapters of the book where he was so allusive that I'm not sure whether I understood what he was referring to or not. It seems that he takes his Unitarian upbringing to its logical conclusion.
The earlier chapters of the book, however, with their first hand accounts of influential men of the day, are fresh and interesting. Because of his position as an Adams, I suppose, he knew an amazing number of important statesmen and others who were at the top of their profession, like the sculptor St. Gaudens. One of my favorite chapters is one in which he has invited to a dinner party and told to listen closely to a new poet whom the host admires. He forms the conclusion, independently, that the man is brilliant, even though he's unknown at the time. The poet is Swineburne.
I think I'll be glad in the long run that I made the effort to read this book. I find this period of history increasingly fascinating because it is the one that changed Americans from being producers to consumers, and many writers who sensed the change were considering what their reactions should be. In that characteristic double way he has of writing, Adams both can't seem to accept that he really lives in such a time, yet also shares its most egregiously wrong-headed characteristic: He believes in the perfectability of the human race. He is so wrong on this count, in fact, that he ends the book by musing that if he and his (deceased) friends could come back to see the results of their work in 1938, they would likely find a world made peaceful by their efforts. But at least he put himself out on a limb, honestly trying to discern the mind of his time."
"One of the most important factors in the "education" of this man -- whose father and great-grandfather were both presidents of the USA, and who witnessed and participated in central events of US history for almost 100 years -- were the seasons of New England. He describes this here, in one of my favorite passages from his account:
"The New England boy had a wider range of emotions than boys of more equable climates. He felt his nature crudely, as it was meant. . . . Winter and summer were two hostile lives, and bred two separate natures. Winter was always the effort to live; summer was tropical license... Summer was the multiplicity of nature; winter was school. The bearing of the seasons on the education of Henry Adams was no fancy; it was the most decisive force he ever knew; it ran through life, and made the division between its perplexing, warring, irreconcilable problems, irreducible opposites, with growing emphasis to the last year of study. From earliest childhood the boy was accustomed to feel that, for him, life was double. Winter and summer, town and country, law and liberty, were hostile, and the man who pretended they were not, was in his eyes, a schoolmaster -- that is, a man employed to tell lies to little boys" (14)."
"This book is essentially Henry Adams' autobiography, but it focuses on his education and his efforts as a scholar and professor. He overall thesis is the breakdown of traditional society during the 19th century, using his own experience as an example. The writing style is somewhat dense, particularly for someone who doesn't know a lot about 19th century America. However, by the end, the author has brought the book together around the central thesis. It is interesting to see how many of the trends that currently bedevil America actually began during the 19th century (or before)."
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