The Ingenious Dr. Franklin
Selected Scientific Letters of Benjamin Franklin
Nathan G. Goodman, Editor
"Dr. Franklin's own excited, uproariously witty reports
to his family, his friends, and his scientific colleagues in
Europe and America create an incomparable portrait of
science in the eighteenth century. Reading these letters
fosters a new affection for our country's foremost and
most beloved inventor."--Dava Sobel, author of
Longitude and Galileo's Daughter
"This marvelous collection helps rescue Ben Franklin
from our impression of him as a genial tinkerer flying
kites in the rain. In fact, he was a serious scientist
whose letters reveal the scope of his ideas, ranging from
daylight savings time to bifocals to magnetism. This
book crackles with his wonderful mental
energy."--Walter Isaacson, managing editor of Time
The Ingenious Dr. Franklin, an outstanding collection
of Benjamin Franklin's scientific correspondence, has
long been unavailable yet deserves a place beside his
Autobiography as essential reading for everyone
interested in history, wit, and invention. Portioned into
three sections, "Practical Schemes and Suggestions,"
"Diverse Experiments and Observations," and
"Scientific Deductions and Conjectures," these letters
discuss an extraordinary range of topics, including the
art of procuring pleasant dreams, choosing eye glasses,
the first human flight, the character of clouds, the
behavior of oil and water, smallpox and cancer, the
cause of colds, charting the Gulf Stream, and prehistoric
animals of the Ohio. Culled from ponderous volumes
of collected works or private collections, these engaging
and unabridged letters were assembled to allow readers
to discover for themselves Benjamin Franklin's
vigorous personality, his humanity, and his penetrating
intelligence.
Nathan G. Goodman is the author of Benjamin Rush,
Physician and Citizen, 1746-1813, also published by
the University of Pennsylvania Press.
256 pages / 5 5/16 x
8 1/4
Paper 1974 / 0-8122-1067-0 / $14.95t / £11.50
Pennsylvania Paperbacks
Parades and the Politics of
the Street
Festive Culture in the Early American Republic
Simon P. Newman
296 pages / 6 x 9
Paper 1999 / 0-8122-1724-1 / $19.95s / £15.00
Early American Studies
"Newman's impressively researched and elegantly
written interpretation of popular culture and political
mobilization is a major contribution to scholarship on
the early American republic."--American Studies
"Deeply researched, evocative chapters treat the partisan
politics of popular leadership, Independence Day,
American celebrations of the French Revolution, and the
songs, signs, and symbols of popular political
culture."--Journal of American History
"The world of the Founding Fathers was also a
postrevolutionary society, in whose streets people of all
social classes jostled in festivals and parades that
expressed a vibrant popular politics. Simon Newman's
book is as lively as the tumultuous political culture he
has mapped."--Linda K. Kerber
"In this impressive study of festive culture in the early
republic, Simon Newman has gone a long way towards
filling in many of the gaps in our understanding not
only of early American culture and society but also of
the changing nature of American nationalism in this
period."--Urban History
Simon P. Newman vividly evokes the celebrations of
America's first national holidays in the years between
the ratification of the Constitution and the inauguration
of Thomas Jefferson. He demonstrates how, by taking
part in the festive culture of the streets, ordinary
American men and women were able to play a
significant role in forging the political culture of the
young nation. The creation of many of the patriotic
holidays we still celebrate coincided with the emergence
of the first two-party system. With the political songs
they sang, the liberty poles they raised, and the partisan
badges they wore, Americans of many walks of life
helped shape a new national politics destined to replace
the regional practices of the colonial era.
Simon P. Newman is a member of the Department of
Modern History at the University of Glasgow.
Building America's First
University: An Historical and Architectural Guide to the
University of Pennsylvania
George E. Thomas and David
B. Brownlee
408 pages /
8 x 10
Cloth Apr 2000 / 0-8012-3515-0 / $45.00t / £34.00
Building America's First University tells the story of the
University of Pennsylvania, a story that begins with
Benjamin Franklin's transcendent notion that learning
ought not to be restricted to a leading religion or class.
Rather than looking back toward antiquarian
knowledge, Franklin set his college's course toward the
world of the present and the future by focusing on
modern languages, the natural sciences, and
contemporary literature. His goals were soon reflected
in the addition of a course in medicine, the first in the
New World, and, by the end of the century, a course in
law. This broader definition of education was celebrated
after the American Revolution when the College was
renamed the University of Pennsylvania, the first
American institution to carry that all-encompassing title.
In the intervening centuries, Franklin's vision has
become the model of American higher education.
Since its founding the University has adapted to reflect
the values of the community that has supported it,
charting a course between innovation and convention.
These changes are evident in the architecture and
character of the three campuses that have been its home.
From Franklin's adaptation of a nonsectarian chapel as
the institution's first quarters to Frank Furness's
innovative University Library and Louis Kahn's
momentous Richards Medical Research Laboratory,
Penn's buildings can be seen as illuminating the
evolving intentions of the University's leaders.
Written by architectural historians George E. Thomas
and David B. Brownlee, Building America's First
University uses the physical evidence of Penn's
campuses and buildings to illustrate the development of
this landmark institution in American education. Part 1
recounts the history of the University, with three of the
five chapters devoted to the evolution of the current
campus. The historical chapters weave together the
often conflicting interests and goals of trustees,
administrators, alumni, and students that have shaped
the institution of today. Part 2 presents a gazetteer to the
campus in its present form--two hundred and fifty years
after Benjamin Franklin wrote his Proposals for the
Education of Youth in Pensilvania. Here the authors
describe every significant building on campus, with at
least one photograph of each. Coming at the end of
forty years of massive growth, this is the first
comprehensive architectural history of the University
since the early twentieth century.
George E. Thomas is Lecturer of Historical
Preservation and Urban Studies at the University of
Pennsylvania. He is the author of Frank Furness: The
Complete Works and William L. Price: From Arts and
Crafts to Modern Design.
David B. Brownlee is Professor of the History of Art at
the University of Pennsylvania. His books include The
Law Courts: The Architecture of George Edmund Street
and Friedrich Weinbrenner, Architect of Karlsruhe.
Empire and Others
British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850
Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern, Editors
Much has been written about the forging of a British identity in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The
process, unconfined to the British Isles, ran across the Irish
Sea and Atlantic Ocean and was played out in
North America and the Caribbean. The identities of Irish
Catholics or Highland Scots who took part in the
imperial venture abroad were subject to constant renegotiation.
In the process, the indigenous peoples of
North America, the Caribbean, the Cape, Australia, and New
Zealand were forced to redefine their own
identities. Although the encounter was far from equal, it was by
no means simple or monolithic
This collection explores the many complex ways in which
identities were forged within Britain and among
indigenous peoples through a process of collision and compromise.
Contributions from Africa, Australia, and
both sides of the Atlantic deal with different aspects of these
encounters-for example, "Native Americans and
Early Modern Concepts of Race" and "Hunting and the
Politics of Masculinity in Cherokee Treaty-making,
1763-1775." Empire and Others provides a valuable study that
will be of particular interest to students of
Colonial American history and early modern British history.
Martin Daunton is Professor of Economic History at the University
of Cambridge. Rick Halpern is Reader in
the History of the United States at University College London.
Not for sale outside
North America and Philippines
400 pages / 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Paper 1999 / 0-8122-1699-7 / $24.95s / £19.00
Critical Histories
The Peoples of Philadelphia A History of Ethnic Groups and Lower-Class Life, 1790-1940
Allen F. Davis and Mark H. Haller, Editors
Although much has been written about upper-class Philadelphians, only in recent decades have historians paid attention to the Jews and working-class blacks, the immigrant Irish, Italians, and Poles who settled in the city and gave such sections as Moyamensing, Southwark, South Philadelphia, and Kensington their vitality and distinctive flavor.
In The Peoples of Philadelphia, the authors draw on census schedules, court records, city directories, and tax records as well as newspaper files and other sources to give a picture of the ways in which these less privileged groups of Philadelphians lived. The resulting twelve studies tell a fascinating story that often ontradicts the commonly held view of Philadelphia. Michael Feldberg describes the frequent rioting that raged during the 1840s. John K. Alexander terms eighteenth-century Philadelphia "a city steeped in fear." John F. Sutherland writes of housing and sanitation problems. Bruce Laurie tells how ethnic fire companies fought among themselves with fists, knives, and guns, not infrequently maiming and even killing one another.
What emerges is a picture of Philadelphia radically different from the conventional portrait of astaid old city, corrupt and contented. The men and women of Philadelphia who emerge in these pages are anything but staid, and certainly not contented.
Allen F. Davis has published many books, including The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society and Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914.
Mark Haller is the author of Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought.
Both are Professors of History at Temple University.
/ 312 pages / 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 / 0-8122-1670-9 Paper $17.50s / American History, American Studies / Books of Regional Interest
Franklin and His Friends: Portraying the Man of Science in Eighteenth-Century America
Brandon Brame Fortune and
Deborah J. Warner
Portraits, like the printed texts and manuscript documents more conventionally used by historians, can serve as historical evidence. They are central to our understanding of the social construction of personal identity--of how people presented themselves in a social context.
Franklin and His Friends takes a new, cross-disciplinary look at early American science through the lens of portraiture. Portraits by such accomplished American painters as Gilbert Stuart, John Singleton Copley, and Charles Willson Peale tell a unique story through imagery that defines not only likeness but also constructs the identity of the subject as a member of the larger community of science.
Anchored by the figure--and portraits--of Benjamin
Franklin (1706-1790), whose scientific reputation was
universal within the Western republic of letters, this book also
encompasses his scientific colleagues, many
of whom were his friends. Many of Franklin's countrymen, some
well-known to us and others shrouded in
obscurity, shared his delight in scientific knowledge and
experiments, and, like Franklin, worked with artists to create
portraits that clearly reveal their scientific interests.
The authors examine the original context and reception
of these portraits, and contend that they situate each
subject within his local community as well as across cultural,
economic, and geographical boundaries to fix him within the
international community of science. The last section of the book
highlights images of men of science created after the American
Revolution, and explores the connections expressed in portraiture
between science and the developing culture of the United States.
This book will accompany an exhibition of the same title at the
National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., scheduled for
1999.
Brandon Brame Fortune is Assistant Curator of Painting
and Sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery.
Deborah J. Warner is Curator of Science, Medicine, and Society at
the National Museum of American History.
April / 200 pages / / 8 1/2 x 11 / Paper / $ / World rights / Art / American History
196 pages / 8 1/2 x 11
Paper Jun 1999 / 0-8122-1701-2 / $34.95t / £26.50
Describing Early America: Bartram, Jefferson, Crevecouer, and the Influences of Natural History
Pamela Regis
"Regis makes an important contribution to the understanding of eighteenth-century American ideas."--William & Mary Quarterly
"So much has been written about Thomas
Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, William Bartram's
Travels, and St. John de Crevecoeur's Letters from an American
Farmer that one might suppose that nothing
new could be said about them. Yet, drawing on modes of analysis
supplied by writers as diverse as Edmund
Burke, Arthur O. Lovejoy, Michel Foucault, and Clifford Geertz,
Pamela Regis has constructed an
interpretive context which views these well-known texts from a
new perspective."--Times Higher Education Supplement
"Regis offers a valuable and challenging revision
of contemporary understanding of her subjects' literary
purposes and the place of these texts in American literary
history."--American Literature
Describing Early America is a study of William
Bartram's Travels, Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the
State of Virginia, and J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's Letters
from an American Farmer that
situates them within two important intellectual traditions: the
literature of travel and the science of
natural history. Pamela Regis contends that the travel genre
provided the narrative framework on which these
texts were built, but that natural history offered much more: a
way of looking at the world, a way of
describing what the authors saw, and an overarching scheme in
which to fit what they had seen.
During the eighteenth century, natural history was
understood to encompass a broad range of scientific
inquiry. Natural historians took for their subject matter all of
what they called Creation and approached it
through a single methodology. At the center of this methodology
was the Linnaean system of describing
and naming plants and animals, classifying them, and locating
them along the Great Chain of Being. In
Linnaeus's scheme the natural order is static and timeless.
Regis argues that this static view of the natural
order dominates the rhetorical structures of Travels, Notes,
and Letters, where the narrative sections serve merely to connect
passages shaped by the descriptive method
of natural history. This method makes the land appear new,
stripped of any history. Thus Bartram's America,
for example, seems to be waiting for history to happen and for
individuals to live their lives there.
Pamela Regis is Associate Professor of English at Western Maryland College.
May 200 pages / 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paper May 1999 / 0-8122-1686-5 / $14.95s / £11.50
William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania:
A Documentary History
Jean R. Soderlund, Editor
432 pages / 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Paper Apr 1999 / 0-8122-1131-6 / $24.95s / £19.00
On March 5, 1681, one day after receiving his royal charter for
Pennsylvania, William Penn wrote that he
believed God would make his colony "the seed of the
nation." Penn wanted his Pennsylvania to be a land
where people of differing languages and customs could live
together, where men and women could worship as
they pleased, where men could participate fully in their
government. Such a land, Penn believed, would indeed be blessed.
Beginning with his petition to the king in May 1680
and ending with his departure to England in August
1684, this book contains the most important documents describing
William Penn's founding of Pennsylvania.
The collection assembled here includes letters, orders,
petitions, charters, laws, pamphlets, maps,
constitutional drafts, legislative journals, newspaper articles,
memoranda, deeds, and other business records
that include Penn's own explanations of his desire to found a
Quaker colony, his invitation to settlers, and
his design for government.
Accounts of his experiences in America and his great
sense of this land's promise complete this absorbing
portrait of one of America's founders.
Jean R. Soderlund is Professor of History at Lehigh
University, where she is also chair of the History
Department and codirector of the Lawrence Henry Gipson Institute
for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Her
other books include Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit and,
with Gary B. Nash, Freedom By Degrees:
Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath.
Penn Press University of Pennsylvania
April 30, 2001