Henry Adams and the Need to Know (Massachusetts Historical Society Studies in American History and Culture, 8) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0934909873 ISBN 13: 9780934909877

Publisher: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2005

Synopsis

For Henry Adams at the turn of the twentieth century, as for his successors in the twenty-first, the relation of mind to a world remade by technology and geopolitical conflict largely determined the destiny of civil life. Henry Adams and the Need to Know presents fourteen essays that articulate Adams' ongoing preoccupation with knowledge, stressing his eclecticism and his need to clarify the role of critical intelligence in public life. Adams' work appeals to a wide spectrum of historical and literary inquiry and claims a place in multiple scholarly contexts. The topics covered in this volume range from international politics (of Adams' age and ours) to portraiture, from orientalism and travel literature to the disintegration of the human mind. Here, leading scholars explore often-overlooked details of Adams' relationships with people and ideas. They reopen settled topics and reframe truisms. Each essay affirms, in one way or another, that to study Adams is to discover his continuing and astonishing relevance.

About this title

About the Author:

Author of The Literary Vocation of Henry Adams, William Merrill Decker is Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. Earl N. Harbert, author of The Force So Much Closer Home: Henry Adams and the Adams Family, is Professor Emeritus at Northeastern University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Massachusetts Historical Society
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0934909873
• ISBN 13: 9780934909877
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Decker William Merrill, Harbert Earl N.