Untangling the private feelings, ambitions, and fears of early Americans through their personal writings from the Revolution to the Civil War. Modern readers of history and biography unite around a seemingly straightforward question: What did it feel like to live in the past? In Longing for Connection, historian Andrew Burstein attempts to answer this question with a vigorous, nuanced emotional history of the United States from its founding to the Civil War. Through an examination of the letters, diaries, and other personal texts of the time, along with popular poetry and novels, Burstein shows us how early Americans expressed deep emotions through shared metaphors and borrowed verse in their longing for meaning and connection. He reveals how literate, educated Americans--both well-known and more obscure--expressed their feelings to each other and made attempts at humor, navigating an anxious world in which connection across spaces was difficult to capture. In studying the power of poetry and literature as expressions of inner life, Burstein conveys the tastes of early Americans and illustrates how emotions worked to fashion myths of epic heroes, such as the martyr Nathan Hale, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. He also studies the public's fears of ocean travel, their racial blind spots, and their remarkable facility for political satire. Burstein questions why we seek a connection to the past and its emotions in the first place. America, he argues, is shaped by a persistent belief that the past is reachable and that its lessons remain intact, which represents a major obstacle in any effort to understand our national history. Burstein shows, finally, that modern readers exhibit a similar capacity for rationalization and that dire longing for connection across time and space as the people he studies.

Two centuries ago, native New Yorker Washington Irving exploded onto the literary scene of Europe with the publication of his breakout collection of stories, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Published in England and America in 1819 -1820, and universally praised for its inventive characters and soul-searching qualities, including the immortal tales "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," the volume enjoyed remarkable transatlantic success, allowing Irving to become the first of his nation to support himself as a professional author. In this distinctive collection, historians and literary scholars come together to reassess Irving's imaginative world and complex cultural legacy. Alternately a satirist and a nostalgia merchant, Irving was ever absorbed in reconstituting a lost past, which the volume dubs "Rip Van Winkle's Republic." The assembled scholars explore issues of Anglo-American culture, the power of imagery, race, and the treatment of time and history in Irving's vast body of literature, as well as his status as a bibliophile, an antiquarian, and a prominent figure in an age of literary celebrity. Edited by acclaimed historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Rip Van Winkle's Republic marks a rediscovery of this marvelous author of social satire and fabled tales of the past.

In political speech, Thomas Jefferson is the eternal flame. No other member of the founding generation has served the agendas of both Left and Right with greater vigor. When Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the iconic Jefferson Memorial on the founder's two hundredth birthday, in 1943, he declared the triumph of liberal humanism. Harry Truman claimed Jefferson as his favorite president, too. And yet Ronald Reagan was as great a Jefferson admirer as any Democrat. He had a go-to file of Jefferson's sayings and enshrined him as a small-government conservative. So, who owns Jefferson - the Left or the Right? The unknowable yet irresistible third president has had a tortuous afterlife, and he remains a fixture in today's culture wars. Pained by Jefferson's slaveholding, Democrats still regard him highly. Until recently he was widely considered by many African Americans to be an early abolitionist. Libertarians adore him for his inflexible individualism, and although he formulated the doctrine of separation of church and state, Christian activists have found intense religiosity between the lines in his pronouncements. The renowned Jefferson scholar Andrew Burstein lays out the case for both ""Democrat"" and ""Republican"" Jefferson as he interrogates history's greatest shape-shifter, the founder who has inspired perhaps the strongest popular emotions. In this timely and powerful book, Burstein shares telling insights, as well as some inconvenient truths, about politicized Americans and their misappropriations of the past, including the concoction of a ""Jeffersonian"" stance on issues that Jefferson himself could never have imagined. Here is one book that is more about ""us"" than it is about Jefferson. It explains how the founding generation's most controversial partisan became essential to America's quest for moral security - how he became, in short, democracy's muse.

Washington Irving-author, ambassador, Manhattanite, and international celebrity-has largely slipped from America's memory, and yet, his creations are still very well known. With a historian's eye for scope and significance, Andrew Burstein returns Irving to the context of his native nineteenth century where he was a major celebrity-both a colorful comic genius and the first name in our national literature. Though he gave his young nation such enduring tales as "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle," he was far more than one of our nation's most outsized literary talents. Irving was an American original and a citizen of the world.

When Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, he left behind a series of mysteries that have captured the imaginations of historical investigators for generations. In "Jefferson's Secrets," Andrew Burstein draws on sources previous biographers have glossed over or missed entirely. Beginning with Jefferson's last days, Burstein shows how Jefferson confronted his own mortality. Burstein also tackles the crucial questions history has yet to answer: Did Jefferson love Sally Hemings? What were his attitudes towards women? Did he believe in God? How did he wish to be remembered? The result is a profound and nuanced portrait of the most complex of the Founding Fathers.

In America's Jubilee distinguished historian Andrew Burstein presents an engrossing narrative that takes us back to a pivotal year in American history, 1826, when the reins of democracy were being passed from the last Revolutionary War heroes to a new generation of leaders.

Through brilliant sketches of selected individuals and events, Burstein creates an evocative portrait of the hopes and fears of Americans fifty years after the Revolution. We follow an aged Marquis de Lafayette on his triumphant tour of the country; and learn of the nearly simultaneous deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on the 4th of July. We meet the ornery President John Quincy Adams, the controversial Secretary of State Henry Clay, and the notorious hot-tempered General Andrew Jackson. We also see the year through the eyes of a minister's wife, a romantic novelist, and even an intrepid wheel of cheese. Insightful and lively, America's Jubilee captures an unforgettable time in the republic’s history, when a generation embraced the legacy of its predecessors and sought to enlarge its role in America’s story.

Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue documents the public lives and personal friendship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, from their first meeting as delegates to the Second Continental Congress to their deaths on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This study takes a look at some of the famous correspondence between the two statesmen who devoted their lives to a new chapter of freedom and self-government. Peterson draws an extended parallel between the backgrounds, experiences, personalities, and intellectual styles of Adams and Jefferson and examines their work in the achievement of independence and the design of new governments for Massachusetts and Virginia. While Adams and Jefferson had much in common, their ideas of human nature, history, society, and government included many differences that would reveal themselves in the course of time. Merrill D. Peterson looks at Adams and Jefferson's relationship across their lives, including their disputes in the midst of the coming French Revolution, their excitement for the establishment of a new American government under the Constitution, their contest for the presidency in 1796, and their eventual reconciliation.

Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue documents the public lives and personal friendship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, from their first meeting as delegates to the Second Continental Congress to their deaths on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This study takes a look at some of the famous correspondence between the two statesmen who devoted their lives to a new chapter of freedom and self-government. Peterson draws an extended parallel between the backgrounds, experiences, personalities, and intellectual styles of Adams and Jefferson and examines their work in the achievement of independence and the design of new governments for Massachusetts and Virginia. While Adams and Jefferson had much in common, their ideas of human nature, history, society, and government included many differences that would reveal themselves in the course of time. Merrill D. Peterson looks at Adams and Jefferson's relationship across their lives, including their disputes in the midst of the coming French Revolution, their excitement for the establishment of a new American government under the Constitution, their contest for the presidency in 1796, and their eventual reconciliation.

In political speech, Thomas Jefferson is the eternal flame. No other member of the founding generation has served the agendas of both Left and Right with greater vigor. When Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the iconic Jefferson Memorial on the founder's two hundredth birthday, in 1943, he declared the triumph of liberal humanism. Harry Truman claimed Jefferson as his favorite president, too. And yet Ronald Reagan was as great a Jefferson admirer as any Democrat. He had a go-to file of Jefferson's sayings and enshrined him as a small-government conservative. So, who owns Jefferson--the Left or the Right? The unknowable yet irresistible third president has had a tortuous afterlife, and he remains a fixture in today's culture wars. Pained by Jefferson's slaveholding, Democrats still regard him highly. Until recently he was widely considered by many African Americans to be an early abolitionist. Libertarians adore him for his inflexible individualism, and although he formulated the doctrine of separation of church and state, Christian activists have found intense religiosity between the lines in his pronouncements. The renowned Jefferson scholar Andrew Burstein lays out the case for both ""Democrat"" and ""Republican"" Jefferson as he interrogates history's greatest shape-shifter, the founder who has inspired perhaps the strongest popular emotions. In this timely and powerful book, Burstein shares telling insights, as well as some inconvenient truths, about politicized Americans and their misappropriations of the past, including the concoction of a ""Jeffersonian"" stance on issues that Jefferson himself could never have imagined. Here is one book that is more about ""us"" than it is about Jefferson. It explains how the founding generation's most controversial partisan became essential to America's quest for moral security-how he became, in short, democracy's muse.

Mortal Remains Death in Early America Edited by Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein "An important book that introduces new methods of analyzing death in early American history. . . . The book illustrates the profound ways that experiences with death and the imagery associated with death influenced not only religion but also other issues--national politics, gender politics, and race relations--that are easy to relate to our contemporary concerns. Isenberg's and Burnstein's work makes a significant contribution to the discussion of death and dying in American history and its value for interdisciplinary study."--"Journal of the American Academy of Religion" "These 12 short, highly focused essays analyze how experiences with death and the imagery associated with it influenced US culture before 1860. . . . Recommended."--"Choice" ""Mortal Remains" has set an impressive standard for scholarship on death in early America."--"Journal of American History" ""Mortal Remains," a collection of twelve essays on death in English-speaking America from the late 1600s to the middle decades of the 1800s, offers a sampling of current cultural historical scholarship and concerns."--"Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography" "Mortal Remains" introduces new methods of analyzing death and its crucial meanings over a 240-year period, from 1620 to 1860, untangling its influence on other forms of cultural expression, from religion and politics to race relations and the nature of war. In this volume historians and literary scholars join forces to explore how, in a medically primitive and politically evolving environment, mortality became an issue that was inseparable from national self-definition. Attempting to make sense of their suffering and loss while imagining a future of cultural permanence and spiritual value, early Americans crafted metaphors of death in particular ways that have shaped the national mythology. As the authors show, the American fascination with murder, dismembered bodies, and scenes of death, the allure of angel sightings, the rural cemetery movement, and the enshrinement of George Washington as a saintly father, constituted a distinct sensibility. Moreover, by exploring the idea of the vanishing Indian and the brutality of slavery, the authors demonstrate how a culture of violence and death had an early effect on the American collective consciousness. "Mortal Remains" draws on a range of primary sources--from personal diaries and public addresses, satire and accounts of sensational crime--and makes a needed contribution to neglected aspects of cultural history. It illustrates the profound ways in which experiences with death and the imagery associated with it became enmeshed in American society, politics, and culture. Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein are coholders of the Mary Frances Barnard Chair in Nineteenth-Century American History at the University of Tulsa. Isenberg is the author of "Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America," winner of the 1999 SHEAR book prize. Burstein is the author of several books, including "America's Jubilee." 2002 264 pages 6 x 9 20 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3678-1 Cloth $55.00s 36.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-1823-7 Paper $24.95s 16.50 World Rights American History, Cultural Studies Short copy: "These 12 short, highly focused essays analyze how experiences with death and the imagery associated with it influenced US culture before 1860."--"Choice"

The provocative interpretation of American political rhetoric
Americans like to use words of sentiment and sympathy, passion and power, to explain their democracy. In a provocative new work, Andrew Burstein examines the metaphorically rich language which Americans developed to express their guiding principle: that the New World would improve upon the Old. In journals, letters, speeches, and books, an impassioned rhetoric of "feeling" set the tone for American patriotism.
Burstein shows how the eighteenth century "culture of sensibility" encouraged optimism about a global society: the new nation would succeed. Americans believed, as much by sublime feeling as by intellectual achievement or political liberty. As they grew more self-confident, this pacific ideal acquired teeth: noble Washington and humane Jefferson yielded to boisterous Jackson, and the language of gentle feeling to the force of Manifest Destiny. Yet Americans never stopped celebrating what they believed was their innate impulse to do good.