Jonathan Wells – författare

Consolidating one of the most complex and multi-faceted eras in American History, this new edition of Jonathan Wells’s A House Divided unifies the broad and varied scholarship on the American Civil War. Amassing a variety of research, this accessible and readable text introduces readers to both the war and the Reconstruction period, and how Americans lived during this time of great upheaval in the country''s history. Designed for a variety of subjects and teaching styles, this text not only looks at the Civil War from a historical perspective, but also analyzes its ramifications on the United States and American identities through the present day. This second edition has been updated throughout, incorporating new scholarship from recent studies on the Civil War era, and includes additional photographs and maps (now incorporated throughout the text), updated bibliographies, and a supplementary companion website.

Consolidating one of the most complex and multi-faceted eras in American History, this new edition of Jonathan Wells’s A House Divided unifies the broad and varied scholarship on the American Civil War. Amassing a variety of research, this accessible and readable text introduces readers to both the war and the Reconstruction period, and how Americans lived during this time of great upheaval in the country''s history. Designed for a variety of subjects and teaching styles, this text not only looks at the Civil War from a historical perspective, but also analyzes its ramifications on the United States and American identities through the present day. This second edition has been updated throughout, incorporating new scholarship from recent studies on the Civil War era, and includes additional photographs and maps (now incorporated throughout the text), updated bibliographies, and a supplementary companion website.

Living in the pre-war, Upper East Side building Benjamin’s grandfather built, with two children no longer at home and professional lives never fully realized, perhaps being New Yorkers is the most that the Sterns will ever be. But Benjamin''s younger brother Spence, founder and CEO of hearing aid company Belphonics, has an idea for a new product line that comes from the brothers'' shared history of rock and roll and CBGB''s, the club that they visited often in their youths, and where, Spence believes, his hearing was permanently damaged. 

In proposing that Benjamin join him in the new venture, Spence also hopes that it might salvage Benjamin''s and Dita''s tenuous financial position. However, they both know that getting involved in Spence''s schemes often comes at a high price. That same evening the Sterns have their daughter Alessandra over for dinner, only for the news of Benjamin’s potential new job to be upstaged by the appearance of their other child, seventeen-year-old Giorgio, whose violent adolescent behavior resulted in his being sent away for most of high school. 

Now seventeen, he steps through their front door without warning, a still very troubled young man. As Benjamin and Dita find themselves reckoning with the choices they have made, a sudden shift in perspective offers Giorgio’s voice, whose declaration that his name is not, in fact, Giorgio, sparks the retelling of his troubled past—one for whom all the Sterns must come to share some measure of responsibility. 

A debut novel from poet and memoirist Jonathan Wells, The Sterns Are Listening explores a family on the verge of both collapse and regeneration. Brimming with affection and humor for its characters, it nevertheless traces a courageous path to the deeply uncomfortable heart of the matter, one that might just give the Stern family a shot at redemption.

“Everyone had a clearer vision of my body than I did. It didn’t feel as if my body was really mine.” At fourteen-years-old, Jonathan Wells weighed just 67 pounds, igniting a scrutinizing persecution of his body that followed him into adulthood.As a boy in preparatory day school in upstate New York in the 1970s, Wells’s teacher abuses and humiliates him for his size, forcing Wells, for the first time, to question his right to take up space in the world. Wells’s father, reading his weight as a clear deficit of masculinity, and perhaps sexuality, creates a workout regimen meant to bulk him up. When that doesn’t help, he has Wells seen by a slew of specialists, all claiming he is in perfect health, and yet the problem cannot be denied: he is simply too skinny.Wells’s complicated relationship with his charming but elusive mother does not help matters. As the eldest son, he is privy to the struggles of a fraying marriage in which he, however slight, plays a divisive role. Wells is sent to boarding school in Switzerland, where his size continues to generate controversy, from the merely rude to the violently abusive. And yet, even as he manages to establish an identity of his own, one which must invariably contend with gender norms and conventions, his father’s obsession with his size follows him to Europe, threatening to destroy the space he has painstakingly won for himself.As he grows into an adult, combatting the intrusive liberties others take with his body, Jonathan must define masculinity for himself, ultimately coming to terms with the damage of a father’s love.The critically acclaimed poet and author of the collection Debris, Jonathan Wells gives us a thoughtful, candid, and powerful memoir about the universal exploration of adolescence and self-image, the frailty of masculinity, and all the places we seek comfort in a world trying to redefine us.