A New York Review Books Original The ideal introduction and companion to Adams's "massive and magisterial" history of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, presenting an indelible picture of America's startling rise to world power. Henry Adams's nine-volume History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison is the first great history of America as well as the first great American work of history, one that rivals Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in its eloquence and sweep. But where Gibbon told of imperial collapse, Adams recorded th... View More...
Pristine subscription edition in flawless tan slipcase, no jacket as issued, crisp & unread blue cloth volume with reading ribbon in its original position. View More...
Many Americans, argues Michael C. C. Adams, tend to think of the Civil War as more glorious, less awful, than the reality. Millions of tourists flock to battlefields each year as vacation destinations, their perceptions of the war often shaped by reenactors who work hard for verisimilitude but who cannot ultimately simulate mutilation, madness, chronic disease, advanced physical decay. In Living Hell, Adams tries a different tack, clustering the voices of myriad actual participants on the firing line or in the hospital ward to create a virtual historical reenactment.Perhaps because the United ... View More...
Was World War II really such a "good war"? Popular memory insists that it was, in fact, "the best war ever." After all, we knew who the enemy was, and we understood what we were fighting for. The war was good for the economy. It was liberating for women. A battle of tanks and airplanes, it was a "cleaner" war than World War I. Although we did not seek the conflict--or so we believed--Americans nevertheless rallied in support of the war effort, and the nation's soldiers, all twelve million of them, were proud to fight. But according to historian Michael C. C. Adams, our memory of the war era as... View More...
A nuclear priesthood has arisen in Russia. From portable churches to the consecration of weapons systems, the Russian Orthodox Church has been integrated into every facet of the armed forces to become a vital part of Russian national security, politics, and identity. This extraordinary intertwining of church and military is nowhere more visible than in the nuclear weapons community, where the priesthood has penetrated all levels of command and the Church has positioned itself as a guardian of the state's nuclear potential. Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy considers how, since the Soviet collapse in 1... View More...
The definitive account of the organized destruction of the Ottoman Armenians . . . No future discussion of the history will be able to ignore this brilliant book.--Orhan Pamuk Beginning in 1915, under the cover of a world war, some one million Armenians were killed through starvation, forced marches, and mass acts of slaughter. Although Armenians and the judgment of history have long held the Ottoman powers responsible for genocide, modern Turkey has rejected any such claim. Now, in a pioneering work of excavation, Turkish historian Taner Ak am has made unprecedented use of Ottoman and other s... View More...
This is Alcott's account of her experiences as a nurse during the Civil War in a Washington D.C. hospital. The sketches are taken "from letters hastily written in the few leisure moments of a very busy life," and so maintain the immediacy and force of their author. View More...
The history of the American rebellion against England, written by one of America's preeminent eighteenth-century historians, differs from many views of the Revolution. It is not colored by excessive worship of the Founding Fathers but, instead, permeated by sympathy for all those involved in the conflict. Alden has taken advantage of recent scholarship that has altered opinions about George III and Lord North. But most of all this is a balanced history--political, military, social, constitutional--of the thirteen colonies from the French and Indian War in 1763 to Washington's inauguration in 1... View More...
The history of the American rebellion against England, written by one of America's preeminent eighteenth-century historians, differs from many views of the Revolution. It is not colored by excessive worship of the Founding Fathers but, instead, permeated by sympathy for all those involved in the conflict. Alden has taken advantage of recent scholarship that has altered opinions about George III and Lord North. But most of all this is a balanced history--political, military, social, constitutional--of the thirteen colonies from the French and Indian War in 1763 to Washington's inauguration in 1... View More...
