Carl L. Becker - Böcker

“Will remain a classic—a beautifully finished literary product.”—Charles A. Beard, American Historical Review  In this volume, the distinguished American historian Carl L. Becker challenges the belief that the eighteenth century was essentially modern in its temper. He writes, in crystalline prose, that the period commonly described as the Age of Reason was, in fact, very far from that; that Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, and Locke were living in a medieval world; and that these philosophers “demolished the Heavenly City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with more up-to-date materials.”  In a Foreword written for this edition, Johnson Kent Wright looks at the book’s continuing relevance within the context of current discussion about the Enlightenment, noting that Becker’s work is “likely to beguile and provoke readers for a long time to come.”

This succinct and engaging history of the founding of Cornell University traces the institution's origins within the educational climate of mid-nineteenth-century America. Originally delivered as six lectures celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the opening the university, this book was first published by Cornell University Press in 1943. Beginning with a survey of collegiate education prior to the Civil War, Carl L. Becker details the history of the Morrill Land Grant College Act that made possible the establishment of Cornell (among other universities); deftly portrays the lives of the Ezra Cornell, who supplied the essential idea and funding for the university, and Andrew D. White, who, as legislator, lobbyist, and first university president, made Cornell's dream a reality; and desrcibes the events surrounding the incorporation and opening of the university in 1868. Also included in this book are fifteen documents pertaining to its founding, as well as Becker's 1940 lecture, "The Cornell Tradition: Freedom and Responsibility."

First published in 1958, Detachment and the Writing of History collects essays and letters by Carl L. Becker in which the noted historian outlines his views on the study of history, the craft of the historian, the art of teaching, and the historical evolution of the idea of democracy. Together, these invaluable writings demonstrate Becker's conviction of the moral seriousness of the historian's calling and of the importance of history as a factor, at once intellectual and artistically imaginative, in the life of society.