(The First 4 volumes of this set chronicle the history of ...)
The First 4 volumes of this set chronicle the history of the United States from discovery to the Great Depression and election of FDR. The book titles are:
1. The Rise of the Union
2. A Half Century of Expansion
3. Civil War and Aftermath
4. America and World Power
Volumes V-VII are a continuation of Adams' work through annual records from 1933-1963:
5. The Record of 1933-1941
6. The Record of 1942-1948
7. The Record of 1949-1963
Each volume contains plentiful black-and-white illustrations, political cartoons, documents, pamphlets, etc. The final pages of each volume are devoted to picturing the theme of that particular volume, depicting many typical scenes, outstanding personalities, and some of the most conspicuous representations of our architectural imagination - a veritable panorama of American life.
(Anything that Adams writes is certain to be stimulating, ...)
Anything that Adams writes is certain to be stimulating, due to his lucid, fluent style -- and his uncompromising viewpoint. The Living Jefferson is no exception; the subject is still a controversial one. This book is at one and the same time, less than a biography and more than one:- less, because it sketches Jefferson's life in broad strokes, with no cluttering of details and dates and events; more, because the author paints in a vivid background of the whole period covered by his life, a performance possible only to an historian who has the whole American scene at his command. His text is Jefferson's rank as a great liberal, and the vitality of his ideals, which have kept -- him like Hamilton and for different reasons -- a living American force down to the present day. Almost -- and with amazing balance -- the book is as much a life of Hamilton as of Jefferson, the two are so inextricably involved. Not the least interesting feature of the book are the author's side comments on conditions today. The final chapter -- certain to arouse heated controversy -- contrasts the promise of the 1932 platform, lip service to Jefferson, with the performance.
History of the Town of Southampton (east of Canoe Place)
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
(
There is a tradition of one-volume narrative histories ...)
There is a tradition of one-volume narrative histories of the United States in which the political, military, diplomatic, social, and economic strands are skillfully interwoven. Rather than add to these volumes, The Epic of America paints a sweeping picture of the diverse past that has created America’s national story. In this important narrative, James Truslow Adams reviews how the ordinary American has matured over time in outlook, character, and opinion.
Adams grew increasingly conscious of how different an American is now from the man or woman of any other advanced nation. He is equally interested in the whole of American history, how it began, and what it represented in the first half of the twentieth century. Adams traces the historical origins of the American concept of "bigger and better," attitudes toward business, the American Dream, and other characteristics generally considered "typically American."
Ever since America became an independent nation, each generation has seen an uprising of its citizens to save the American Dream from forces seeking to overwhelm and dispel it. Possibly the greatest of these struggles is still ahead—not a struggle of revolutionists against established order, but of the ordinary person who seeks to hold fast to the rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This classic book is valuable for a new age and as important for this new century as it was when originally written.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
James Truslow Adams was an American writer and historian. He was the author of three-volume history of New England.
Background
James Truslow Adams was born on October 18, 1878 in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the second son and youngest of three children of William Newton Adams Jr. and Elizabeth Harper (Truslow) Adams. He was of Virginia ancestry, his Adams forebear--an indentured servant who rose to landowner--having settled there in the seventeenth century. He had a Spanish grandmother, for William Adams Sr. , while representing an American mercantile firm in Latin America, had married the daughter of a prominent family in Caracas, Venezuela.
Both of Adams' grandfathers were prosperous businessmen. His father, by contrast, was an unsuccessful Wall Street broker, whose precarious financial condition closely defined the course of Adams' education and early career.
Education
Adams attended the Brooklyn Polytechnic School (1890-1894) and its Institute (1894-1898), where he received the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1898. His graduation as class president, valedictorian, and poet gave evidence of his intellectual and literary talent. Drawn at first to philosophy, Adams spent an uninspiring year at Yale, for which he received a pro forma Master of Arts (1900).
Honorary degrees by several notable universities were conferred upon him.
Career
Adams began his business career in New York that culminated in twelve years in a Wall Street brokerage house. In 1912, having amassed a sum he considered sufficient to give him independence, he withdrew from business and moved to Bridgehampton, Long Island, to devote himself to study and writing. His first books--Memorials of Old Bridgehampton (1916) and History of the Town of Southampton (1918)--clearly demonstrated his skill as a writer and scholar and brought him to the attention of professional historians.
During World War I, because of his increasingly recognized talents, he was appointed to "The Inquiry, " a commission gathered by Col. Edward M. House, President Wilson's adviser, to assemble data for use at the Paris Peace Conference, and he attended the conference as cartographer in the American delegation.
In the postwar years, Adams undertook the four books that gained him his national reputation as a writer of American history. These were the so-called New England trilogy--The Founding of New England (1921), Revolutionary New England, 1691-1776 (1923), and New England in the Republic, 1776-1850 (1926).
What gave the books their distinction was Adams' increasingly refined literary ability, his capacity for seeing events in broad perspective, and his presentation of themes that were, in their day, fresh and challenging. He arraigned the Puritans for their bigotry and greed, attributing their migration to America more to economic than to religious motives. He redeemed the antagonists of the Puritans, including the Indians and the British imperial administrators. He stressed the growth of secular ideals and of a uniquely American culture during the later colonial and early national periods. And in both periods he considered central the conflict between men of wealth and common people.
As his fame grew, Adams was invited by the editors of some of the major journals to write articles on timely issues. Collected in two volumes--Our Business Civilization: Some Aspects of American Culture (1929) and The Tempo of Modern Life (1931)--the articles expounded more or less the same theme: that Americans were materialistic, provincial in outlook, lacking in grace and manners, losing their moral fiber, and more and more disrespectful of the law. This theme he reiterated in The Epic of America (1931), by far his most popular volume. A broad survey of the nation's past, it traced the evolution of what he called "the American dream" of a better, richer, and fuller life for everyone. Realizing that the dream was in danger, Adams concluded that it could be saved only by a refinement of American values, an improvement of the quality of American life. From his vantage ground in London, where he lived from 1927 to 1935, he felt particularly qualified to see his homeland in clearer perspective.
The historical writings of Adams' later years dealt with subjects that held an ever-growing interest for him. He drew a lively, sympathetic, yet honest portrait of four generations of the great Massachusetts Adamses in one of his most widely read books, The Adams Family (1930). In America's Tragedy (1934), he saw the Civil War as a product of forces he considered fundamental to the nation's history: the frontier and sectionalism. A devout Anglophile, he sought to show in the two volumes of his history of the British empire--Building the British Empire (1938) and Empire on the Seven Seas (1940)--what expanding British ideas and institutions had contributed to the world.
dams' continuous and deepening preoccupation with making himself financially secure involved him in a series of publications that were remunerative, if far from being his best efforts. Some of these, for which he served as editor, were nevertheless useful reference works, such as the Dictionary of American History, the Atlas of American History (1943), and the Album of American History.
More a popularizer than an original mind, Adams expressed consummately the attitudes and ideas that commanded respect among intellectuals in the 1920's. But when the depression came, his critique of American life, because it was genteel rather than radical, nostalgic rather than truly reformist, rapidly lost appeal.
He died of a stroke at his home in Southport, Connecticut, and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Achievements
Adams helped to popularize the latest scholarship about American history and his three-volume history of New England is well regarded by scholars. The popularity of his achievement was amply evidenced by the many awards and honors he received, including the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1921 for The Founding of New England.
Adams was active in the American Academy of Arts and Letters serving as both chancellor and treasurer of that organization. He was also a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Massachusetts Historical Society, American Antiquarian Society, American Historical Association, and the American Philosophical Society. Among British societies, he was honored as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Quotations:
“There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live. Surely these should never be confused in the mind of any man who has the slightest inkling of what culture is. For most of us it is essential that we should make a living. .. In the complications of modern life and with our increased accumulation of knowledge, it doubtless helps greatly to compress some years of experience into far fewer years by studying for a particular trade or profession in an institution; but that fact should not blind us to another—namely, that in so doing we are learning a trade or a profession, but are not getting a liberal education as human beings. ”
“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position. ”
“The great value of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it. ”
Membership
Adams was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Institute of Arts and Letters, Massachusetts Historical Society, American Antiquarian Society, American Historical Association, American Philosophical Society, and also a fellow member of the Royal Society of Literature.
Connections
On January 18, 1927, Adams married Kathryn M. Seely, a young nurse who had attended him during an illness three years earlier. In the interim he had come to depend more and more on her friendship, but much soul-searching and anxiety preceded his final, happy decision to marry. He and his wife had no children.
