|
Showing 1 - 9 of
9 matches in All Departments
This volume attempts to throw fresh light on two areas of Benjamin
Franklin's intellectual world, namely: his self-fashioning and his
political thought. It is an odd thing that for all of Franklin's
voluminous writings-a fantastically well-documented correspondence
over many years, scientific treatises that made his name amongst
the brightest minds of Europe, newspaper articles, satires, and of
course his signature on the Declaration of Independence and the
U.S. Constitution-and yet scholars debate how to get at his
political thought, indeed, if he had any political philosophy at
all. It could be argued, that he is perhaps the American Founder
most closely associated with the Enlightenment. Similarly, for a
man who left so much evidence about his life as a printer,
bookseller, postmaster, inventor, diplomat, politician, scientist,
among other professions, one who wrote an autobiography that has
become a piece of American national literature and, indeed, a
contribution to world culture, the question of who Ben Franklin
continues to engage scholars and those who read about his life. His
identity seems so stable that we associate it with certain virtues
that apply to the way we live our lives, time management, for
example. The image of the stable figure of Franklin is applied to
create a sense of trust in everything from financial institutions
to plumbers. His constant drive to improve and fashion himself
reveal, however, a man whose identity was not static and fixed, but
was focused on growth, on bettering his understanding of himself
and the world he lived in and attempted to influence and improve.
This volume attempts to throw fresh light on two areas of Benjamin
Franklin s intellectual world, namely: his self-fashioning and his
political thought. It is an odd thing that for all of Franklin s
voluminous writings a fantastically well-documented correspondence
over many years, scientific treatises that made his name amongst
the brightest minds of Europe, newspaper articles, satires, and of
course his signature on the Declaration of Independence and the
U.S. Constitution and yet scholars debate how to get at his
political thought, indeed, if he had any political philosophy at
all. It could be argued, that he is perhaps the American Founder
most closely associated with the Enlightenment. Similarly, for a
man who left so much evidence about his life as a printer,
bookseller, postmaster, inventor, diplomat, politician, scientist,
among other professions, one who wrote an autobiography that has
become a piece of American national literature and, indeed, a
contribution to world culture, the question of who Ben Franklin
continues to engage scholars and those who read about his life. His
identity seems so stable that we associate it with certain virtues
that apply to the way we live our lives, time management, for
example. The image of the stable figure of Franklin is applied to
create a sense of trust in everything from financial institutions
to plumbers. His constant drive to improve and fashion himself
reveal, however, a man whose identity was not static and fixed, but
was focused on growth, on bettering his understanding of himself
and the world he lived in and attempted to influence and improve."
The American Revolution conjures a series of iconographic images in
the contemporary American imagination. In these imagined scenes,
defiant Patriots fight against British Redcoats for freedom and
democracy, while a unified citizenry rallies behind them and the
American cause. But the lived experience of the Revolution was a
more complex matter, filled with uncertainty, fear, and discord. In
The American Revolution Reborn, editors Patrick Spero and Michael
Zuckerman compile essays from a new generation of multidisciplinary
scholars that render the American Revolution as a time of intense
ambiguity and frightening contingency. The American Revolution
Reborn parts company with the Revolution of our popular imagination
and diverges from the work done by historians of the era from the
past half-century. In the first section, "Civil Wars," contributors
rethink the heroic terms of Revolutionary-era allegiance and refute
the idea of patriotic consensus. In the following section, "Wider
Horizons," essayists destabilize the historiographical
inevitability of America as a nation. The studies gathered in the
third section, "New Directions," present new possibilities for
scholarship on the American Revolution. And the last section,
titled "Legacies," collects essays that deal with the long
afterlife of the Revolution and its effects on immigration,
geography, and international politics. With an introduction by
Spero and a conclusion by Zuckerman, this volume heralds a
substantial and revelatory rebirth in the study of the American
Revolution. Contributors: Zara Anishanslin, Mark Boonshoft, Denver
Brunsman, Katherine Carte Engel, Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Travis
Glasson, Edward G. Gray, David C. Hsiung, Ned C. Landsman, Michael
A. McDonnell, Kimberly Nath, Bryan Rosenblithe, David S. Shields,
Patrick Spero, Matthew Spooner, Aaron Sullivan, Michael Zuckerman.
Beyond the Century of the Child Cultural History and Developmental
Psychology Edited by Willem Koops and Michael Zuckerman "This
volume offers readers a brilliant and thought-provoking symposium
on historical aspects of childhood, of conceptions and arrangements
of childhood, and of the study of child development
itself."--"American Journal of Psychology" In 1900, Ellen Key wrote
the international bestseller "The Century of the Child." In this
enormously influential book, she proposed that the world's children
should be the central work of society during the twentieth century.
Although she never thought that her "century of the child" would
become a reality, in fact it had much more resonance than she could
have imagined. The idea of the child as a product of a protective
and coddling society has given rise to major theories and arguments
since Key's time. For the past half century, the study of the child
has been dominated by two towering figures, the psychologist Jean
Piaget and the historian Philippe Aries. Interest in the subject
has been driven in large measure by Aries's argument that adults
failed even to have a concept of childhood before the thirteenth
century, and that from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth
there was an increasing "childishness" in the representations of
children and an increasing separation between the adult world and
that of the child. Piaget proposed that children's logic and modes
of thinking are entirely different from those of adults. In the
twentieth century this distance between the spheres of children and
adults made possible the distinctive study of child development and
also specific legislation to protect children from exploitation,
abuse, and neglect. Recent students of childhood have challenged
the ideas those titans promoted; they ask whether the distancing
process has gone too far and has begun to reverse itself. In a
series of essays, "Beyond the Century of the Child" considers the
history of childhood from the Middle Ages to modern times, from
America and Europe to China and Japan, bringing together leading
psychologists and historians to question whether we unnecessarily
infantilized children and unwittingly created a detrimental wall
between the worlds of children and adults. Together these scholars
address the question whether, a hundred years after Ellen Key wrote
her international sensation, the century of the child has in fact
come to an end. Willem Koops is Professor of Developmental
Psychology and Dean of the Department of Social Sciences at Utrecht
University. Michael Zuckerman is Professor of History at the
University of Pennsylvania and author of "Almost Chosen People:
Oblique Biographies in the American Grain." 2003 304 pages 6 x 9
ISBN 978-0-8122-3704-7 Cloth $59.95s 39.00 World Rights History,
Psychology Short copy: "This volume offers readers a brilliant and
thought-provoking symposium on historical aspects of childhood, of
conceptions and arrangements of childhood, and of the study of
child development itself."--"American Journal of Psychology"
In 1821, at the age of seventy-seven, Thomas Jefferson decided to
"state some recollections of dates and facts concerning myself."
His ancestors, Jefferson writes, came to America from Wales in the
early seventeenth century and settled in the Virginia colony.
Jefferson's father, although uneducated, possessed a "strong mind
and sound judgement" and raised his family in the far western
frontier of the colony, an experience that contributed to his son's
eventual staunch defense of individual and state rights. Jefferson
attended the College of William and Mary, entered the law, and in
1775 was elected to represent Virginia at the Continental Congress
in Philadelphia, an event that propelled him to all of his future
political fortunes. Jefferson's autobiography continues through the
entire Revolutionary War period, and his insights and information
about persons, politics, and events-including the drafting of the
Declaration of Independence, his service in France with Benjamin
Franklin, and his observations on the French Revolution-are of
immense value to both scholars and general readers. Jefferson ends
this account of his life at the moment he returns to New York to
become secretary of state in 1790. Complementing the other major
autobiography of the period, Benjamin Franklin's, The Autobiography
of Thomas Jefferson, reintroduced for this edition by historian
Michael Zuckerman, gives us a glimpse into the private life and
associations of one of America's most influential personalities.
Alongside Jefferson's absorbing narrative of the way compromises
were achieved at the Continental Congress are comments about his
own health and day-to-day life that allow the reader to picture him
more fully as a human being. Throughout, Jefferson states his
opinions and ideas about many issues, including slavery, the death
penalty, and taxation. Although Jefferson did not carry this
autobiography further into his eventual presidency, the foundations
for all of his thoughts are here, and it is in these pages that
Jefferson lays out what to him was his most important contribution
to his country, the creation of a democratic republic.
Few historians are bold enough to go after America's sacred cows in
their very own pastures. But Michael Zuckerman is no ordinary
historian, and this collection of his essays is no ordinary
book.
In his effort to remake the meaning of the American tradition,
Zuckerman takes the entire sweep of American history for his
province. The essays in this collection, including two never before
published and a new autobiographical introduction, range from early
New England settlements to the hallowed corridors of modern
Washington. Among his subjects are Puritans and Southern gentry,
Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Spock, P. T. Barnum and Ronald
Reagan. Collecting scammers and scoundrels, racists and rebels, as
well as the purest genius, he writes to capture the unadorned
American character.
Recognized for his energy, eloquence, and iconoclasm, Zuckerman is
known for provoking--and sometimes almost seducing--historians into
rethinking their most cherished assumptions about the American
past. Now his many fans, and readers of every persuasion, can newly
appreciate the distinctive talents of one of America's most
powerful social critics.
In this provocative analysis of the New England town before the
Revolution, and of its enduring impact on the American character,
Michael Zuckerman makes a major contribution toward a
reinterpretation of the nature of American society and the origins
of the non-liberal tradition in America. Arguing that the true
concern of these towns was not the individual rights or liberties
of the citizen, but rather the homogeneity and tranquility of the
community, Mr. Zuckerman opens a new perspective on the phenomenon
of American “town-meeting democracy.”
|
|