David S. Brown – författare

Richard Hofstadter (1916-70) was America’s most distinguished historian of the twentieth century. The author of several groundbreaking books, including The American Political Tradition, he was a vigorous champion of the liberal politics that emerged from the New Deal. During his nearly thirty-year career, Hofstadter fought public campaigns against liberalism’s most dynamic opponents, from McCarthy in the 1950s to Barry Goldwater and the Sun Belt conservatives in the 1960s. His opposition to the extreme politics of postwar America—articulated in his books, essays, and public lectures—marked him as one of the nation’s most important and prolific public intellectuals.  In this masterful biography, David Brown explores Hofstadter’s life within the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism. A fierce advocate of academic freedom, racial justice, and political pluralism, Hofstadter charted in his works the changing nature of American society from a provincial Protestant foundation to one based on the values of an urban and multiethnic nation. According to Brown, Hofstadter presciently saw in rural America’s hostility to this cosmopolitanism signs of an anti-intellectualism that he believed was dangerously endemic in a mass democracy.  By the end of a life cut short by leukemia, Hofstadter had won two Pulitzer Prizes, and his books had attracted international attention. Yet the Vietnam years, as Brown shows, culminated in a conservative reaction to his work that is still with us. Whether one agrees with Hofstadter’s critics or with the noted historian John Higham, who insisted that Hofstadter was “the finest and also the most humane intelligence of our generation,” the importance of this seminal thinker cannot be denied. As this fascinating biography ultimately shows, Hofstadter’s observations on the struggle between conservative and liberal America are relevant to our own times, and his legacy challenges us to this day.

Richard Hofstadter (1916-70) was America's most distinguished historian of the twentieth century. The author of several groundbreaking books, including "The American Political Tradition", he was a vigorous champion of the liberal politics that emerged from the New Deal. During his career, Hofstadter fought public campaigns against liberalism's most dynamic opponents, from McCarthy in the 1950s to Barry Goldwater and the Sun Belt conservatives in the 1960s. His opposition to the extreme politics of postwar America marked him as one of the nation's most important and prolific public intellectuals. In this masterly biography, David S. Brown explores Hofstadter's life within the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism. A fierce advocate of academic freedom, racial justice, and political pluralism, Hofstadter charted in his works the changing nature of American society from a provincial Protestant foundation to one based on the values of an urban and multiethnic nation. According to Brown, Hofstadter presciently saw in rural America's hostility to this cosmopolitanism signs of an anti-intellectualism that he believed was dangerously endemic in a mass democracy.By the end of a life cut short by leukemia, Hofstadter had won two Pulitzer Prizes and his books had attracted international attention. Yet the Vietnam years, as Brown shows, culminated in a conservative reaction to his work that is still with us. Whether one agrees with Hofstadter's critics or his fans, the importance of this seminal thinker cannot be denied.

Metal contamination of groundwater results from many human activities, including agriculture, mining, and the disposal of municipal waste and fly ash. Metals in Groundwater describes the transport of metals to groundwater from these and other sources. It also covers risk assessment of metals in groundwater, coupling of chemicals and hydrological models, and sorption of metals onto soils and clays. The speciation of metals is examined in detail. The book will interest researchers in environmental quality, mining, and agriculture; consultants; industry professionals; and personnel within regulatory agencies.

Pigeonholed in popular memory as a Jazz Age epicurean, a playboy, and an emblem of the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nation’s shifting mood and manners after World War I. In Paradise Lost, David Brown contends that Fitzgerald’s deepest allegiances were to a fading antebellum world he associated with his father’s Chesapeake Bay roots. Yet as a midwesterner, an Irish Catholic, and a perpetually in-debt author, he felt like an outsider in the haute bourgeoisie haunts of Lake Forest, Princeton, and Hollywood—places that left an indelible mark on his worldview.In this comprehensive biography, Brown reexamines Fitzgerald’s childhood, first loves, and difficult marriage to Zelda Sayre. He looks at Fitzgerald’s friendship with Hemingway, the golden years that culminated with Gatsby, and his increasing alcohol abuse and declining fortunes which coincided with Zelda’s institutionalization and the nation’s economic collapse.Placing Fitzgerald in the company of Progressive intellectuals such as Charles Beard, Randolph Bourne, and Thorstein Veblen, Brown reveals Fitzgerald as a writer with an encompassing historical imagination not suggested by his reputation as “the chronicler of the Jazz Age.” His best novels, stories, and essays take the measure of both the immediate moment and the more distant rhythms of capital accumulation, immigration, and sexual politics that were moving America further away from its Protestant agrarian moorings. Fitzgerald wrote powerfully about change in America, Brown shows, because he saw it as the dominant theme in his own family history and life.

The first half of this book is primarily a systematic survey of the snails, beginning with glossaries, keys for identification to genera and a checklist of species. This is followed by a synopsis of species, with brief notes on ecology, distribution and parasites. Relationships are then described between snails and schistosomes and with other parasites. The book goes on to consider the factors affecting snail populations and possible methods for population control.

Metal contamination of groundwater results from many human activities, including agriculture, mining, and the disposal of municipal waste and fly ash. Metals in Groundwater describes the transport of metals to groundwater from these and other sources. It also covers risk assessment of metals in groundwater, coupling of chemicals and hydrological models, and sorption of metals onto soils and clays. The speciation of metals is examined in detail. The book will interest researchers in environmental quality, mining, and agriculture; consultants; industry professionals; and personnel within regulatory agencies.

Thomas Jefferson advocated a society based on talent and virtue. His belief in the inherent goodness of humankind coupled with his faith in science made him the consummate gentleman-statesman. There was also an ethnocentric side to Jefferson. His agrarian bias led him to combat northern interests that encouraged the expansion of industry, and his legacy lends itself to continual reinterpretation. More than 180 entries in this text cover the significant events, people, philosophies, and legislation associated with Jefferson. Each entry describes and defines the topic and places it in historical context.

Metal contamination of groundwater results from many human activities, including agriculture, mining, and the disposal of municipal waste and fly ash. Metals in Groundwater describes the transport of metals to groundwater from these and other sources. It also covers risk assessment of metals in groundwater, coupling of chemicals and hydrological models, and sorption of metals onto soils and clays. The speciation of metals is examined in detail. The book will interest researchers in environmental quality, mining, and agriculture; consultants; industry professionals; and personnel within regulatory agencies.

Metal contamination of groundwater results from many human activities, including agriculture, mining, and the disposal of municipal waste and fly ash. Metals in Groundwater describes the transport of metals to groundwater from these and other sources. It also covers risk assessment of metals in groundwater, coupling of chemicals and hydrological models, and sorption of metals onto soils and clays. The speciation of metals is examined in detail. The book will interest researchers in environmental quality, mining, and agriculture; consultants; industry professionals; and personnel within regulatory agencies.

The first half of this book is primarily a systematic survey of the snails, beginning with glossaries, keys for identification to genera and a checklist of species. This is followed by a synopsis of species, with brief notes on ecology, distribution and parasites. Relationships are then described between snails and schistosomes and with other paras

The fierce polarization of contemporary politics has encouraged Americans to read back into their nation''s past a perpetual ideological struggle between liberals and conservatives. However, in this timely book, David S. Brown advances an original interpretation that stresses the critical role of moderate statesmen, ideas, and alliances in making our political system work. Beginning with John Adams and including such key figures as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and Bill Clinton, Brown charts the vital if uneven progress of centrism through the centuries. Moderate opposition to both New England and southern secessionists during the early republic and later resistance to industrial oligarchy and the modern Sunbelt right are part of this persuasion''s far-reaching legacy. Time and again moderates, operating under a broad canopy of coalitions, have come together to reshape the nation''s electoral landscape.Today''s bitter partisanship encourages us to deny that such a moderate tradition is part of our historical development--one dating back to the Constitutional Convention. Brown offers a less polemical and far more compelling assessment of our politics.

The fierce polarization of contemporary politics has encouraged Americans to read back into their nation's past a perpetual ideological struggle between liberals and conservatives. However, in this timely book, David S. Brown advances an original interpretation that stresses the critical role of moderate statesmen, ideas, and alliances in making our political system work. Beginning with John Adams and including such key figures as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and Bill Clinton, Brown charts the vital if uneven progress of centrism through the centuries. Moderate opposition to both New England and southern secessionists during the early republic and later resistance to industrial oligarchy and the modern Sunbelt right are part of this persuasion's far-reaching legacy. Time and again moderates, operating under a broad canopy of coalitions, have come together to reshape the nation's electoral landscape.Today's bitter partisanship encourages us to deny that such a moderate tradition is part of our historical development--one dating back to the Constitutional Convention. Brown offers a less polemical and far more compelling assessment of our politics.

The first half of this book is primarily a systematic survey of the snails, beginning with glossaries, keys for identification to genera and a checklist of species. This is followed by a synopsis of species, with brief notes on ecology, distribution and parasites. Relationships are then described between snails and schistosomes and with other paras

“Insightful.” —The Wall Street Journal * “Noteworthy…readers will come away better informed about antebellum history and how it mirrors current events.” —Booklist The fascinating story of how a new law in 1854—the Kansas-Nebraska Act—unexpectedly became the greatest miscalculation in American history, dividing North and South, creating the Republican party, and paving the way for the Civil War.The history of the United States was shaped by a series of sectional compromises—the Constitutional Convention, the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and the Compromise of 1850. While these accords formed an imperfect republic, or “a house divided,” as Abraham Lincoln put it, the country nevertheless remained united. But then in 1854, this three-generations system suddenly blew up with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, leading to a nearly fatal rupture in the union, described here by David S. Brown in riveting detail. The act declared that planters, if permitted by territorial laws, could bring their enslaved people to the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains—the core of Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, which had formerly been reserved for free labor. Northerners were shocked that free soil might now be turned over to slavery, and they responded defiantly. In the bill’s wake the conservative Whig Party (winners of multiple presidential elections) gave way to the “radical” Republican Party, which, within six years, would take control of the central government, provoking Southern secession. In A Hell of a Storm, Brown brings history to life in a way that resonates with contemporary events. Through chapters on Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, and Harriet Tubman, along with a cast of presidents, poets, abolitionists, and black emigrationists, Brown weaves a political, cultural, and literary history that chronicles the rise of the Republican Party, the collapse of antebellum compromises, and the coming of the Civil War, all topics that mirror current discussions about polarization in our nation today. By illuminating the personalities and the platforms, the writings and ideas that upended an older America and left space for its successor, A Hell of a Storm reminds us that American history is always being made, and it can be both dynamic and dangerous, both then and now.

“Insightful.” —The Wall Street Journal * “Noteworthy…readers will come away better informed about antebellum history and how it mirrors current events.” —Booklist The fascinating story of how a new law in 1854—the Kansas-Nebraska Act—unexpectedly became the greatest miscalculation in American history, dividing North and South, creating the Republican party, and paving the way for the Civil War.The history of the United States was shaped by a series of sectional compromises—the Constitutional Convention, the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and the Compromise of 1850. While these accords formed an imperfect republic, or “a house divided,” as Abraham Lincoln put it, the country nevertheless remained united. But then in 1854, this three-generations system suddenly blew up with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, leading to a nearly fatal rupture in the union, described here by David S. Brown in riveting detail. The act declared that planters, if permitted by territorial laws, could bring their enslaved people to the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains—the core of Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, which had formerly been reserved for free labor. Northerners were shocked that free soil might now be turned over to slavery, and they responded defiantly. In the bill’s wake the conservative Whig Party (winners of multiple presidential elections) gave way to the “radical” Republican Party, which, within six years, would take control of the central government, provoking Southern secession. In A Hell of a Storm, Brown brings history to life in a way that resonates with contemporary events. Through chapters on Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, and Harriet Tubman, along with a cast of presidents, poets, abolitionists, and black emigrationists, Brown weaves a political, cultural, and literary history that chronicles the rise of the Republican Party, the collapse of antebellum compromises, and the coming of the Civil War, all topics that mirror current discussions about polarization in our nation today. By illuminating the personalities and the platforms, the writings and ideas that upended an older America and left space for its successor, A Hell of a Storm reminds us that American history is always being made, and it can be both dynamic and dangerous, both then and now.

From the acclaimed historian and author of The Last American Aristocrathailed as '';marvelous'' by The New York Times Book Reviewcomes an '';elegant and immersive'' (Publishers Weekly) new biography of Theodore Roosevelt, exploring the life of America''s twenty-sixth president and his pivotal role in shaping the dawn of the American Century.Challenging traditional views of this towering figure, historian David S. Brown offers a fresh perspective on Roosevelt''s groundbreaking political legacy, including his progressive Square Deal policies that laid the foundation for modern social welfare programs. He also unpacks his bold foreign policy, which expanded America''s global influence and set the stage for its rise as a world power. Brown argues that Roosevelt''s charisma and performative presidency formed a bridge from the old Victorian values to the new industrial age, capturing the attention of the middle class and making him a leader loved by the people. In the Arena vividly portrays Roosevelt''s striking contradictions: he was a rugged outdoorsman with a love for books, a war hero who earned a Nobel Peace Prize, and a once sickly child who grew into a larger-than-life figure of boundless energy. Through compelling storytelling and meticulous research, Brown plumbs the pivotal moments that forged Roosevelt''s indomitable spirit, from watching Lincoln''s funeral procession in childhood and later witnessing the deaths of both his mother and his wife on the same day to wrangling cattle in the West and preserving 150 million acres of national land. Comparable in scope and authority to works like David McCullough''s Mornings on Horseback, Brown''s narrative stands out for its rich detail and sharp insights. More than just an account of a presidency, it is an exploration of a life lived on the edgeindeed beyond the edgeof greatness.

From acclaimed historian and author of the “marvelous” (The New York Times Book Review) The Last American Aristocrat comes a captivating new biography of Teddy Roosevelt, exploring the life of America’s 26th president and his pivotal role in shaping the dawn of the American Century.Theodore Roosevelt was one of America’s most fascinating presidents—a complex man both publicly and privately. In this sweeping biography, historian David S. Brown takes us on an electrifying journey through Theodore Roosevelt’s life—from his privileged New York upbringing to his transformative presidency that reshaped America’s role on the global stage. In the Arena vividly brings Roosevelt to life as a man of striking contradictions: a rugged outdoorsman with a love for books, a war hero who earned a Nobel Peace Prize, and a larger-than-life figure whose energy seemed boundless. Through compelling storytelling and meticulous research, Brown explores the pivotal moments that forged Roosevelt’s indomitable spirit, from battling childhood asthma to witnessing the deaths of both his mother and his wife on the same day, to wrangling cattle in the West and preserving 150 million acres of national land. Challenging traditional views, In the Arena offers a fresh perspective on Roosevelt’s groundbreaking political legacy, including his Square Deal policies that laid the groundwork for modern social welfare programs. It also unpacks his bold foreign policy, which expanded America’s global influence and set the stage for its rise as a world power. Brown argues that Roosevelt’s charisma and performative presidency helped bridge the old Victorian values with the new industrial age, capturing the attention of the middle-class and making him a leader that the people loved. Drawing comparisons to works like David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback, Brown’s narrative stands out for its rich detail and sharp insights. More than just an account of a presidency—it’s an exploration of a life lived on the edge of greatness and is a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand this critical period of American history.

From acclaimed historian and author of the “marvelous” (The New York Times Book Review) The Last American Aristocrat comes a captivating new biography of Teddy Roosevelt, exploring the life of America’s 26th president and his pivotal role in shaping the dawn of the American Century.Theodore Roosevelt was one of America’s most fascinating presidents—a complex man both publicly and privately. In this sweeping biography, historian David S. Brown takes us on an electrifying journey through Theodore Roosevelt’s life—from his privileged New York upbringing to his transformative presidency that reshaped America’s role on the global stage. In the Arena vividly brings Roosevelt to life as a man of striking contradictions: a rugged outdoorsman with a love for books, a war hero who earned a Nobel Peace Prize, and a larger-than-life figure whose energy seemed boundless. Through compelling storytelling and meticulous research, Brown explores the pivotal moments that forged Roosevelt’s indomitable spirit, from battling childhood asthma to witnessing the deaths of both his mother and his wife on the same day, to wrangling cattle in the West and preserving 150 million acres of national land. Challenging traditional views, In the Arena offers a fresh perspective on Roosevelt’s groundbreaking political legacy, including his Square Deal policies that laid the groundwork for modern social welfare programs. It also unpacks his bold foreign policy, which expanded America’s global influence and set the stage for its rise as a world power. Brown argues that Roosevelt’s charisma and performative presidency helped bridge the old Victorian values with the new industrial age, capturing the attention of the middle-class and making him a leader that the people loved. Drawing comparisons to works like David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback, Brown’s narrative stands out for its rich detail and sharp insights. More than just an account of a presidency—it’s an exploration of a life lived on the edge of greatness and is a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand this critical period of American history.

From the acclaimed historian and author of The Last American Aristocrat, comes an elegant and immersive (Publishers Weekly) presidential biography of Theodore Roosevelt, exploring the extraordinary life of Americas twenty-sixth president and his pivotal role in shaping the dawn of the American Century.Brimming with insight (Nathalia Holt, New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls), In the Arena offers a fresh perspective on Roosevelts groundbreaking political legacy, including his progressive Square Deal programs and his bold foreign policy, which expanded Americas global influence and set the stage for its rise as a world power. Brown argues that Roosevelts charisma and command of the bully pulpit helped bridge the divide from the old Victorian values to the new industrial age, making him one of the most popular and influential leaders of the time. In the Arena vividly portrays Roosevelts striking contradictions: he was a rugged outdoorsman and conservationist with a love for books; a Rough Rider and a Spanish-American War hero who became a Nobel Peace Prizewinning president; and a once sickly child who grew into a larger-than-life figure of boundless energy. Through compelling storytelling and meticulous research, Brown recounts the pivotal moments that forged Roosevelts indomitable spirit. More than just a chronicle of a presidency, it is an exploration of a life lived on the edgeindeed beyond the edgeof greatness.

A “marvelous…compelling” (The New York Times Book Review) biography of literary icon Henry Adams—one of America’s most prominent writers and intellectuals, who witnessed and contributed to the United States’ dramatic transition from a colonial society to a modern nation.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 Secretary of State John Hay, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and President Theodore Roosevelt as friends and neighbors. His observations of these powerful men and their policies in his private letters provide a penetrating assessment of Gilded Age America on the cusp of the modern era. “Thoroughly researched and gracefully written” (The Wall Street Journal), The Last American Aristocrat details Adams’s relationships with his wife (Marian “Clover” Hooper) and, following her suicide, Elizabeth Cameron, the young wife of a senator and part of the famous Sherman clan from Ohio. Henry Adams’s letters—thousands of them—demonstrate his struggles with depression, familial expectations, and reconciling with his unwanted widower’s existence. Offering a fresh window on nineteenth century US history, as well as a more “modern” and “human” Henry Adams than ever before, The Last American Aristocrat is a “standout portrait of the man and his era” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

A timely, “solidly researched [and] gracefully written” (The Wall Street Journal) biography of President Andrew Jackson that offers a fresh reexamination of this charismatic figure in the context of American populism—connecting the complex man and the politician to a longer history of division, dissent, and partisanship that has come to define our current times.Andrew Jackson rose from rural poverty in the Carolinas to become the dominant figure in American politics between Jefferson and Lincoln. His reputation, however, defies easy description. Some regard him as the symbol of a powerful democratic movement that saw early 19th-century voting rights expanded for propertyless white men. Others stress Jackson’s prominent role in removing Native American peoples from their ancestral lands, which then became the center of a thriving southern cotton kingdom worked by more than a million enslaved people. A combative, self-defined champion of “farmers, mechanics, and laborers,” Jackson railed against East Coast elites and Virginia aristocracy, fostering a brand of democracy that struck a chord with the common man and helped catapult him into the presidency. “The General,” as he was known, was the first president to be born of humble origins, first orphan, and thus far the only former prisoner of war to occupy the office. Drawing on a wide range of sources, The First Populist takes a fresh look at Jackson’s public career, including the pivotal Battle of New Orleans (1815) and the bitterly fought Bank War; it reveals his marriage to an already married woman and a deadly duel with a Nashville dandy, and analyzes his magnetic hold on the public imagination of the country in the decades between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. “By assessing the frequent comparisons between Jackson and Donald Trump…the hope is that a fresh understanding of the divisive times of ‘the country’s original anti-establishment president’ might shed light on our own” (The Christian Science Monitor).

“Insightful.” —The Wall Street Journal * “Noteworthy…readers will come away better informed about antebellum history and how it mirrors current events.” —Booklist The fascinating story of how a new law in 1854—the Kansas-Nebraska Act—unexpectedly became the greatest miscalculation in American history, dividing North and South, creating the Republican party, and paving the way for the Civil War.The history of the United States was shaped by a series of sectional compromises—the Constitutional Convention, the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and the Compromise of 1850. While these accords formed an imperfect republic, or “a house divided,” as Abraham Lincoln put it, the country nevertheless remained united. But then in 1854, this three-generations system suddenly blew up with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, leading to a nearly fatal rupture in the union, described here by David S. Brown in riveting detail. The act declared that planters, if permitted by territorial laws, could bring their enslaved people to the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains—the core of Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, which had formerly been reserved for free labor. Northerners were shocked that free soil might now be turned over to slavery, and they responded defiantly. In the bill’s wake the conservative Whig Party (winners of multiple presidential elections) gave way to the “radical” Republican Party, which, within six years, would take control of the central government, provoking Southern secession. In A Hell of a Storm, Brown brings history to life in a way that resonates with contemporary events. Through chapters on Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, and Harriet Tubman, along with a cast of presidents, poets, abolitionists, and black emigrationists, Brown weaves a political, cultural, and literary history that chronicles the rise of the Republican Party, the collapse of antebellum compromises, and the coming of the Civil War, all topics that mirror current discussions about polarization in our nation today. By illuminating the personalities and the platforms, the writings and ideas that upended an older America and left space for its successor, A Hell of a Storm reminds us that American history is always being made, and it can be both dynamic and dangerous, both then and now.

A “marvelous…compelling” (The New York Times Book Review) biography of literary icon Henry Adams—one of America’s most prominent writers and intellectuals, who witnessed and contributed to the United States’ dramatic transition from a colonial society to a modern nation.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 Secretary of State John Hay, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and President Theodore Roosevelt as friends and neighbors. His observations of these powerful men and their policies in his private letters provide a penetrating assessment of Gilded Age America on the cusp of the modern era. “Thoroughly researched and gracefully written” (The Wall Street Journal), The Last American Aristocrat details Adams’s relationships with his wife (Marian “Clover” Hooper) and, following her suicide, Elizabeth Cameron, the young wife of a senator and part of the famous Sherman clan from Ohio. Henry Adams’s letters—thousands of them—demonstrate his struggles with depression, familial expectations, and reconciling with his unwanted widower’s existence. Offering a fresh window on nineteenth century US history, as well as a more “modern” and “human” Henry Adams than ever before, The Last American Aristocrat is a “standout portrait of the man and his era” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

A timely, “solidly researched [and] gracefully written” (The Wall Street Journal) biography of President Andrew Jackson that offers a fresh reexamination of this charismatic figure in the context of American populism—connecting the complex man and the politician to a longer history of division, dissent, and partisanship that has come to define our current times.Andrew Jackson rose from rural poverty in the Carolinas to become the dominant figure in American politics between Jefferson and Lincoln. His reputation, however, defies easy description. Some regard him as the symbol of a powerful democratic movement that saw early 19th-century voting rights expanded for propertyless white men. Others stress Jackson’s prominent role in removing Native American peoples from their ancestral lands, which then became the center of a thriving southern cotton kingdom worked by more than a million enslaved people. A combative, self-defined champion of “farmers, mechanics, and laborers,” Jackson railed against East Coast elites and Virginia aristocracy, fostering a brand of democracy that struck a chord with the common man and helped catapult him into the presidency. “The General,” as he was known, was the first president to be born of humble origins, first orphan, and thus far the only former prisoner of war to occupy the office. Drawing on a wide range of sources, The First Populist takes a fresh look at Jackson’s public career, including the pivotal Battle of New Orleans (1815) and the bitterly fought Bank War; it reveals his marriage to an already married woman and a deadly duel with a Nashville dandy, and analyzes his magnetic hold on the public imagination of the country in the decades between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. “By assessing the frequent comparisons between Jackson and Donald Trump…the hope is that a fresh understanding of the divisive times of ‘the country’s original anti-establishment president’ might shed light on our own” (The Christian Science Monitor).

A timely, “solidly researched [and] gracefully written” (The Wall Street Journal) biography of President Andrew Jackson that offers a fresh reexamination of this charismatic figure in the context of American populism—connecting the complex man and the politician to a longer history of division, dissent, and partisanship that has come to define our current times.Andrew Jackson rose from rural poverty in the Carolinas to become the dominant figure in American politics between Jefferson and Lincoln. His reputation, however, defies easy description. Some regard him as the symbol of a powerful democratic movement that saw early 19th-century voting rights expanded for propertyless white men. Others stress Jackson’s prominent role in removing Native American peoples from their ancestral lands, which then became the center of a thriving southern cotton kingdom worked by more than a million enslaved people. A combative, self-defined champion of “farmers, mechanics, and laborers,” Jackson railed against East Coast elites and Virginia aristocracy, fostering a brand of democracy that struck a chord with the common man and helped catapult him into the presidency. “The General,” as he was known, was the first president to be born of humble origins, first orphan, and thus far the only former prisoner of war to occupy the office. Drawing on a wide range of sources, The First Populist takes a fresh look at Jackson’s public career, including the pivotal Battle of New Orleans (1815) and the bitterly fought Bank War; it reveals his marriage to an already married woman and a deadly duel with a Nashville dandy, and analyzes his magnetic hold on the public imagination of the country in the decades between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. “By assessing the frequent comparisons between Jackson and Donald Trump…the hope is that a fresh understanding of the divisive times of ‘the country’s original anti-establishment president’ might shed light on our own” (The Christian Science Monitor).

The fierce polarization of contemporary politics has encouraged Americans to read back into their nation''s past a perpetual ideological struggle between liberals and conservatives. However, in this timely book, David S. Brown advances an original interpretation that stresses the critical role of moderate statesmen, ideas, and alliances in making our political system work. Beginning with John Adams and including such key figures as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and Bill Clinton, Brown charts the vital if uneven progress of centrism through the centuries. Moderate opposition to both New England and southern secessionists during the early republic and later resistance to industrial oligarchy and the modern Sunbelt right are part of this persuasion''s far-reaching legacy. Time and again moderates, operating under a broad canopy of coalitions, have come together to reshape the nation''s electoral landscape.Today''s bitter partisanship encourages us to deny that such a moderate tradition is part of our historical development--one dating back to the Constitutional Convention. Brown offers a less polemical and far more compelling assessment of our politics.