The Jeffersonian Transformation

(Paperback, Main)

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The ideal introduction and companion to Adams's "massive and magisterial" history of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, presenting an indelible picture of America's startling rise to world power. Henry Adams's nine-volume History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison is the first great history of America as well as the first great American work of history, a work that rivals Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in its eloquence and sweep. But where Gibbon told of imperial collapse, Adams recorded the rise of a new, unanticipated power, America, a state that, he shows, beat every odd to expand in a mere sixteen years-1800 to 1817-from a backward provincial outpost to international eminence. What made this transformation all the more remarkable was that it occurred under the watch of two presidents who were frankly skeptical about its benefits, and yet whose policies served to promote it. Thus America not only found its footing in the world, but took on a divided identity-at once isolationist and interventionist-that it continues to display to this day. Famed historian and political commentator Garry Wills's recent, widely reviewed, and well-received Henry Adams and the Making of America introduced readers to the splendors of Adams's history and the rigors of its analysis. This ample new selection from Adams's History is the first to bring together its powerful opening and concluding sections. Together with Wills's thoughtful introduction, it offers readers a chance to experience the magnum opus of one of America's outstanding writers and thinkers.

Reviews

"In his History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson, first published in 1889 and completed three years later by his History of the United States of America during the Administrations of James Monroe, Adams drew on this mix of disillusioned lucidity and cautious hopefulness to show just how America became America. Although often invoked, the "History," is less often read. That is a great pity. Adams's work is a masterpiece, the closest thing to an American epic we possess...readers daunted by its bulk may prefer to begin with The Jeffersonian Transformation: Passages from the History, edited and introduced by Garry Wills." --The New York Sun

"New York Review Books Classics has published an excellent abridgment of Henry Adams' nine-volume "History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison" as The Jeffersonian Transformation. Garry Wills contributes an introduction, but whoever labored to produce the abridgment is uncredited. No matter. The word "magisterial" is tossed around whenever anybody writes a ponderous tome with any claim to definitive status. But Adams' book truly deserves the term, both for his grasp of the overall, and his prose, which has a gorgeous rolling cadence." --Austin American-Statesman

Author Bio

Henry Adams (1838-1918) was an American historian, journalist, and novelist. In 1907 he published his Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, considered by many to be the most important nonfiction work of the twentieth century. He died in 1918 at his home in Washington, D.C. Garry Wills was born in Atlanta, Georgia. One of our most distinguished historians and critics, he is the author of numerous books, including Saint Augustine, Papal Sin, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln at Gettysburg. He has won many other awards, among them two National Book Critics Circle Awards and the 1998 National Medal for the Humanities. He is currently Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern University. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, he lives in Evanston, Illinois.