We live in the countryside of southwest Michigan in a farmhouse dating back to the 1830s on land once owned by James Fenimore Cooper. The land itself has stories to tell that intrigue us as readers and writers ourselves. Katherineās passion for the writings of Jane Addams and Edith Wharton led her to Theodore Roosevelt, a kindred male voice in American literature at the turn of the twentieth century. Tomās passion for environmental writers and activism led him to the books and essays of the 26th President, who believed that good writing sometimes leads to good laws! As professors and writing partners, we are delighted every time we can introduce readers to the literary Theodore Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt read the book and loved his philosophy and way of telling a life story. Autobiography is at the heart of American literature. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Institute and Rooseveltās contemporary in age and thinking, was the first writer the President invited to lunch at the White House, controversial as that invitation came to be. We love the book because, in this day of reconsidering Black history, the reader can see how Washingtonās notion of self-reliance, captured in his famous admonition, āCast down your bucket where you are,ā helps to define the quest for economic and social freedom for people of color in the early 20th century. Readers will discover a compelling man with an engaging writing style who speaks to the struggles within American society that persist to this day.
Originally published in 1901, āUp From Slaveryā is an eloquently written book by Booker T. Washington, an American educator, author, speaker, and counselor to several presidents of the United States. Booker T. Washington was a prominent leader of the African-American community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Washington was born into slavery but would become a prolific author who wrote broadly about his life experiences and the challenges facing African-Americans during his time. In this, Washington describes events in an extraordinary life that began in bondage and culminated in worldwide recognition for his many accomplishments. In simply writtenā¦
We love this book for its breadth and its moral and environmental urgency. Muir writes eloquently [in an admittedly heightened and romantic prose] about the beauties of Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Sequoia National Parks, the only ones in existence at the time. Muir is of interest to Roosevelt because of his understanding of how important it is for wilderness to be preserved for all time not by state governmentsāas was the case in his timeābut by the federal government. This of course was one of TRās central personal beliefs and was to be, especially after his two-night camping trip in Yosemite with Muir in 1903, a central and guiding policy of his Presidency. For an elegant essay, readers might want to spend time with Muirās chapter, āThe Wild Gardens of Yosemite Park.ā
For every person who has experienced the beauty of the mountains and felt humbled by comparison.
John Muirās Our National Parksāreissued to encourage, and inspire travelers, campers, and contemporary naturalistsāis as profound for readers today as it was in 1901.
Take in John Muirās detailed observations of the sights, scents, sounds, and textures of Yosemite, Yellowstone, and forest reservations of the West. Be reminded (as Muir sagely puts), āWildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.ā
During the 1970s and 80s, the Soviet Union penetrated the corporate economy and financial systems of the United States to engage in industrial espionage.
Cold Warrior is the story of Kasia Kerenski, a street mime who is ādiscoveredā to work as a Hollywood actress. Coerced into becoming a double agentā¦
Theodore Roosevelt loved this book because of his own interest as a historian in telling tales of how the West was won. Wister was a friend of Rooseveltās from their Harvard days together, and the President actually worked as a friendly, informal editor of the novel, even advising Wister on the final shape of the story. We love this book not only because it is the first evocation of Western cowboy mythologyāperhaps the most popular American storyābut also because it in many ways replicates Rooseveltās experience as a Dakota rancher in the mid-1880s, an experience he chronicled. Roosevelt and Wister remained close friends until his death. Wister went on to be an adviser and friend to such writers as Ernest Hemingway who was angered by Rooseveltās editing of the novel.
Still as exciting and meaningful as when it was written in 1902, Owen Wister's epic tale of one man's journey into the untamed territory of Wyoming, where he is caught between his love for a woman and his quest for justice, has exemplified one of the most significant and enduring themes in all of American culture.
With remarkable character depth and vivid descriptive passages, The Virginian stands not only as the first great novel of American Western literature, but as a testament to the eternal struggle between good and evil in humanity and a revealing study of the forces thatā¦
Theodore Roosevelt read this book in manuscript and didnāt much like it, but fully understood, as a good reader and adept politician, that it would cause trouble. The President thought Sinclair a āhysteric,ā and despised his socialism, still knowing the book would be a widely heralded bestseller about the meat packing industry in Chicago, and the melodramatic trials of the Lithuanian immigrants who worked there. We love the book because it makes compelling reading to this day. The furor of the public response to the sanitary conditions in the packing plants brought about the momentum that Roosevelt needed to get the Food and Drug Administration established. Sinclair joked, āI aimed for Americaās heart, and hit its stomach.ā Contemporary readers might be surprised to see a president shaping federal policy because of what some muckraker had written.
First serialized in a newspaper in 1905, The Jungle is a classic of American literature that led to the creation of food-safety standards.
While investigating the meatpacking industry in Chicago, author and novelist Upton Sinclair discovered the brutal conditions that immigrant families faced. While his original intention was to bring this to the attention of the American public, his book was instead hailed for bringing food safety to the forefront of people's consciousness.
With its inspired plot and vivid descriptions, Upton Sinclair's classic tale of immigrant woe is now available as an elegantly designed clothbound edition with an elastic closureā¦
This book is set in Montauk, under looming threat from a warming climate and overdevelopment. Now outsider Clancy, a thirty-six-year-old claims adjuster scarred by his orphan childhood, has inherited an unexpected legacy: the power to decide the fate of Montaukās last parcel of undeveloped land. Everyone in town has aā¦
Theodore Roosevelt and Wharton were children of Old New York and shaped by the values of the Gilded Age. They were intellectual and highly creative, and both were little inclined to settle for a soft, safe life that often comes with great wealth. Roosevelt knew and admired Edith Wharton and loved her novel because she tells the truth about money and happiness. As Wharton put it, āA frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.ā Her bestseller in 1905 tells the story of Lily Bart. He loved the novel because he too understood the destructive power wielded by āthe malefactors of great wealth.ā He worked during his Presidency to give everyone āa square deal.ā We love the novel because it resonates with readers today as we live through our own gilded age.
A bestseller when it was published nearly a century ago, this literary classic established Edith Wharton as one of the most important American writers in the twentieth century-now with a new introduction from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan.
Wharton's first literary success-a devastatingly accurate portrait of New York's aristocracy at the turn of the century-is considered by many to be her most important novel, and Lily Bart, her most unforgettable character. Impoverished but well-born, the beautiful and beguiling Lily realizes a secure future depends on her acquiring a wealthy husband. But with her romantic indiscretion, gambling debts, and a maelstromā¦
We tell the story of Theodore Roosevelt as a writer and a reader, literary activities he pursued relentlessly from the time he could read and hold a pencil until the day before he died, when he wrote his last review for The New York Times. During his not very long but intensely lived life, he read untold thousands of books, wrote 47 of them, thousands and thousands of letters, scores of speeches, articles, and reviews. Some say he read a book and dozens of newspapers and magazines a day even while he was in the White House. We review and assess this life in language, painting a complex and somewhat demythologizing portrait of a fascinating, heralded, and often written about American man of the late 19th and early 20th century.
NORVEL: An American Hero chronicles the remarkable life of Norvel Lee, a civil rights pioneer and Olympic athlete who challenged segregation in 1948 Virginia. Born in the Blue Ridge Mountains to working-class parents who valued education, Lee overcame Jim Crow laws and a speech impediment to achieve extraordinary success.
It is 1948 in Berlin. The economy is broken, the currency worthless, and the Russian bear is preparing to swallow its next victim. In the ruins of Hitler's capital, former RAF officers and a woman pilot start an air ambulance company that offers a glimmer of hope. Yet when aā¦