Harvard University Press

THE REAL AMERICAN DREAM

A Meditation on Hope

ANDREW DELBANCO

Since we discovered that, in Tocqueville's words, "the incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy the heart," how have we
Americans made do? In The Real American Dream one of the nation's premier literary scholars searches out the symbols and
stories by which Americans have reached for something beyond worldly desire. A spiritual history ranging from the first
English settlements to the present day, the book is also a lively, deeply learned meditation on hope.

Andrew Delbanco tells of the stringent God of Protestant Christianity, who exerted immense force over the language,
institutions, and customs of the culture for nearly 200 years. He describes the falling away of this God and the rise of the idea of a sacred nation-state. And, finally, he speaks of our own moment, when symbols of nationalism are in decline, leaving us with nothing to satisfy the longing for transcendence once sustained by God and nation.

From the Christian story that expressed the earliest Puritan yearnings to New Age spirituality, apocalyptic environmentalism, and the multicultural search for ancestral roots that divert our own, The Real American Dream evokes the tidal rhythm of American history. It shows how Americans have organized their days and ordered their lives--and ultimately created a culture--to make sense of the pain, desire, pleasure, and fear that are the stuff of human experience. In a time of cultural crisis, when the old stories seem to be faltering, this book offers a lesson in the painstaking remaking of the American dream.

Andrew Delbanco is Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, the author of The Puritan
Ordeal, and the coeditor of The Puritans in America (both from Harvard). He is also the author of The Death of Satan and
Required Reading.

OTHER HARVARD BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR:

The Puritan Ordeal
The Puritans in America
William Ellery Channing


September 1999
The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization
5 1/8 x 7 1/2 inches
160 pages
ISBN 0-674-74925-1
Single world price (listed in US dollars and the pound sterling equivalent): $19.95 / £12.50 cloth
American History

JEFFERSON AND THE INDIANS

The Tragic Fate of the First Americans

ANTHONY F. C. WALLACE

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/Featured/jefferson/index.html

In Thomas Jefferson's time, white Americans were bedeviled by a moral dilemma unyielding to reason and sentiment: what to do about the presence of black slaves and free Indians. That Jefferson himself was caught between his own soaring rhetoric and
private behavior toward blacks has long been known. But the tortured duality of his attitude toward Indians is only now being
unearthed.

In this landmark history, Anthony Wallace takes us on a tour of discovery to unexplored regions of Jefferson's mind. There, the bookish Enlightenment scholar--collector of Indian vocabularies, excavator of ancient burial mounds, chronicler of the eloquence of America's native peoples, and mourner of their tragic fate--sits uncomfortably close to Jefferson the imperialist and architect of Indian removal. Impelled by the necessity of expanding his agrarian republic, he became adept at putting a philosophical gloss on his policy of encroachment, threats of war, and forced land cessions--a policy that led, eventually, to cultural genocide.

In this compelling narrative, we see how Jefferson's close relationships with frontier fighters and Indian agents, land speculators and intrepid explorers, European travelers, missionary scholars, and the chiefs of many Indian nations all complicated his views of the rights and claims of the first Americans. Lavishly illustrated with scenes and portraits from the period, Jefferson and the Indians adds a troubled dimension to one of the most enigmatic figures of American history, and to one of its most shameful legacies.

Anthony F. C. Wallace is University Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania, winner of the
Bancroft Prize in American history for his book Rockdale, and the author of The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca and The
Long, Bitter Trail.

October 1999
Belknap Press
6 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches
60 halftones, 3 maps
416 pages
ISBN 0-674-00066-8
Single world price (listed in US dollars and the pound sterling equivalent): $29.95 / £18.50 cloth
American History/Native American Studies

THE ADAMS WOMEN: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters

PAUL C. NAGEL

From his vast storehouse of knowledge about the Adams family, Nagel pulls out the feminine threads of that tapestry to write all about the Adams women, from Abigail to daughter Nabby, from Louisa Catherine Adams, wife of John Quincy, to Clover Adams, wife of Henry, with others making more than cameo appearances. They all lived exceptional, if not extraordinary, lives, in different ways, and were more than moons crossing the paths of the suns.

 
Paul C. Nagel is former Director of the Virginia Historical Society, a trustee of the Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation, a cultural laureate of Virginia, and a contributing editor of American Heritage.

OTHER HARVARD BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR:

John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life
Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family

April 1999
5 5/16 x 8 inches
24 halftones
336 pages
ISBN 0-674-00410-8
Single World Price: $14.95 / £9.50 paper
American History/Biography/Women's Studies

AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS

A National Bibliography

JAMES P. DANKY, EDITOR

Maureen E. Hady, Associate Editor
Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us." These words are from the front page of Freedom's Journal, the first African-American newspaper published in the United States, in 1827, a milestone event in the history of an oppressed people. From then on a prodigious and hitherto almost unknown cascade of newspapers, magazines, letters, and other literary, historical, and popular writing poured from presses chronicling black life in America.

The authentic voice of African-American culture is captured in this first comprehensive guide to a treasure trove of writings by and for a people, as found in sources in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. This bibliography of over 6,000 entries is the indispensable guide to the stories of slavery, freedom, Jim Crow, segregation, liberation, struggle, and triumph.

Besides describing many new discoveries--from church documents to early civil rights ephemera, from school records to single-mother newsletters, from artists' journals to labor publications--this work informs researchers where and how to find them (for example, through online databases, microfilm, or traditional catalogs).

James P. Danky is Newspapers and Periodicals Librarian at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the editor of Black Periodicals and Newspapers. Maureen E. Hady is African-American Newspapers and Periodicals Bibliographer, also at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Harvard University Press Reference Library
February 1999
8 1/2 x 11 inches
816 pages
ISBN 0-674-00788-3

September 29, 2000