Description: A Political Companion to Henry Adams fills a long-standing gap in scholarship that has devoted little attention to Adams's political thought, offering a nuanced appreciation of his musings on the human condition and political life at the eve of the twentieth century.
Brief description: Natalie Fuehrer Taylor, assistant professor in the Department of Government at Skidmore College, is the author of The Rights of Woman as Chimera: The Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Review Quotes:
" A Political Companion to Henry Adams collects ten essays that examine 'the literary statesmanship' of one of the most gifted, mercurial, and multidisciplinary minds ever to appear in America. No assessment of Henry Adams's achievement is possible without a thorough grounding in the traditions of political thought on which his work draws, yet it is exactly that dimension which readers commonly find most obscure. Assembling contributions from distinguished authorities with those of promising younger scholars, this volume provides welcome explication of the notoriously evasive ideological life of Adams's historical narratives, fiction, autobiography, and travel writing. Its publication is an important event in Henry Adams scholarship." -- William Merrill Decker, author of The Literary Vocation of Henry Adams, Oklahoma State University