The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

The former, which appeared in Adams’s lifetime, was a private printing of only one hundred copies, containing hundreds of printer’s errors and editorial inconsistencies.

By inventing his own fictional missteps, Adams allows readers to educate themselves on how to approach life’s curveballs.Īlthough The Education of Henry Adams has long been considered a classic, until now the only editions available were those from 19. In this text, Adams uses his background information (such as place of birth, voyage destinations, and alma mater) but little else, placing his protagonist in front of life’s various pitfalls with the object of providing those stepping out into the world with the tools they need to handle themselves in the face of adversity. A tireless historian, politician, and traveler, Adams was from first to last a dedicated learner capable of great originality. Written by Adams in the third person, the book became known for founding a new genre best described as 'an education'-an account not of life, but of learning. Published shortly after the author's death in 1918, The Education of Henry Adams is a brilliant, idiosyncratic blend of autobiography and history that charts the great transformation in American life during the 19th and early 20th centuries.Both a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and at the head of the Modern Library's list of the one hundred best English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century, The Education of Henry Adams has long been revered as a great work of literature. This Pulitzer Prize-winner is considered by many to be one of the three greatest autoboigraphies ever written (the other two being Benjaman Franklin's and Jean-Jacques Rosseau's). A literary landmark from the moment it first appeared, the autobiography confers upon its author precisely that prize he felt had always eluded him: success. This audiobook contains thousands of memorable one-liners about politics, morality, culture, and transatlantic relations: 'The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine forest.' There are astonishing glimpses of the high and mighty: 'He saw a long, awkward figure a plain, ploughed face a mind, absent in part, and in part evidently worried by white kid gloves features that expressed neither self-satisfaction nor any other familiar Americanism.' (That would be Abraham Lincoln the 'melancholy function' his Inaugural Ball.) But most of all, Adams' book is a brilliant account of how his own sensibility came to be. As such he rubbed elbows, literally, with Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt and with many of the great figures of his time. He was also the son of the American Ambassador to England, and his secretery. Henry Adams was the grandson of a President and the great-grandson of another one. The Education of Henry Adams is among the oddest and most enlightening books in American literature.

The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams