The last American aristocrat : the brilliant life and improbable education of Henry Adams Cover Image

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The last American aristocrat : the brilliant life and improbable education of Henry Adams / David S. Brown.

Brown, David S. (David Scott), 1966- (author.).

Summary:

Illuminates the achievements of the nineteenth-century historian, writer, and intellectual, discussing Adams's relationships with political leaders inside and outside of his family and his witness to the dawn of modern America.

"Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. His autobiography and modern classic The Education of Henry Adams was widely considered one of the best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. The last member of his distinguished family--after great-grandfather John Adams, and grandfather John Quincy Adams--to gain national attention, he is remembered today as an historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist. Now, historian David Brown sheds light on the brilliant yet under-celebrated life of this major American intellectual. Adams not only lived through the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution but he met Abraham Lincoln, bowed before Queen Victoria, and counted powerful figures, including Secretary of State John Hay, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and President Theodore Roosevelt as friends and neighbors. His observations of these men and their policies in his private letters provide a penetrating assessment of Gilded Age America on the cusp of the modern era." -- Inside front jacket flap.

Record details

ISBN: 9781982128234
ISBN: 1982128232
Physical Description: xi, 451 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Edition: First Scribner hardcover edition.
Publisher: New York : Scribner, 2020.
Copyright: ©2020

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 395-423) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction -- Preface: Back to Beverly -- Becoming Henry Adams. Inheritance ; Education ; Illusions ; Boston ; Washington -- Performing Henry Adams. Flight ; Fury ; Dynamo ; Resonance.