In this intimate, engaging book, John Demos offers an illuminating
portrait of how colonial Americans, from the first settlers to the
postrevolutionary generation, viewed their life experiences. He
also offers an invaluable inside look into the craft of a master
social historian as he unearths--in sometimes unexpected
places--fragments of evidence that help us probe the interior lives
of people from the faraway past.
The earliest settlers lived in a traditional world of natural
cycles that shaped their behavior: day and night; seasonal rhythms;
the lunar cycle; the life cycle itself. Indeed, so basic were these
elements that "almost no one felt a need to comment on them." Yet
he finds cyclical patterns--in the seasonal foods they ate, in the
spike in marriages following the autumn harvest. Witchcraft cases
reveal the different emotional reactions to day versus night, as
accidental mishaps in the light become fearful nighttime mysteries.
During the transitional world of the American Revolution, people
began to see their society in newer terms but seemed unable or
unwilling to come to terms with that novelty. Americans became new,
Demos points out, before they fully understood what it meant. Their
cyclical frame of reference was coming unmoored, giving way to a
linear world view in early nineteenth-century America that is
neatly captured by Kentucky doctor Daniel Drake's description of
the chronography of his life.
In his meditation on these three worlds, Demos brilliantly
demonstrates how large historical forces are reflected in
individual lives. With the imaginative insights and personable
touch that we have come to expect from this fine chronicler of the
human condition,"Circles and Lines" is vintage John Demos.
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