The Americas in the Age of Revolution: 1750-1850
Lester D. Langley
"A splendid comparative history of the revolutionary age, written in a vigorous and interesting style. Langley not only describes and compares the United States, the Caribbean, and the Spanish-American independence struggles but also discusses the underlying causes and consequences of each one. This insightful book contributes greatly to our understanding of the history and mythology of the United States and Latin America."--Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Tulane University
This magisterial work is a comparative history of
three important revolutions in the Americas: the American
Revolution in 1776, the 1791 slave revolt in the French colony
that became Haiti, and the prolonged Spanish-American struggle
for independence that ended a half century later. Lester Langley
describes the movements and events that led to these wars of
independence, explaining why revolution took one form in one
place and a different form in another.
Langley examines the political and social tensions reverberating
throughout British, French, and Spanish America, pointing out the
characteristics that distinguished each upheaval from the others:
the impact of place or location on the course of revolution; the
dynamics of race and color as well as class; the relation between
leaders and followers; the strength of counterrevolutionary
movements; and, especially, the way that militarization of
society during war affected the new governments in the
postrevolutionary era. Langley argues that an understanding of
the legacy of the revolutionary age sheds tremendous light on the
political condition of the Americas today: virtually every modern
political issue--the relationship of the state to the individual,
the effectiveness of government, the liberal promise for
progress, and the persistence of color as a critical dynamic in
social policy--was central to the earlier period.
Lester D. Langley is research professor of history at the University of Georgia and the author of many books.
November History 400 pp. illus. 6 1/8 X 9 1/4 ISBN 0-300-06613-9 $35.00
Handwriting in America: A Cultural History
Tamara Plakins Thornton
Copybooks and the Palmer method, handwriting analysis and autograph collecting--these words conjure up a lost world, in which people looked to handwriting as both a lesson in conformity and a talisman of individuality. In this engaging history, ranging from colonial times to the present, Tamara Plakins Thornton explores the shifting functions and meanings of handwriting in America. Script emerged in the eighteenth century as a medium intimately associated with the self, says Thornton, in contrast to the impersonality of print. But thereafter, just what kind of self would be defined or revealed in script was debated in the context of changing economic and social realities, definitions of manhood and womanhood, and concepts of mind and body. Thornton details the parties to these disputes: writing masters who used penmanship training to form and discipline character; scientific experts who chalked up variations in script to mere physiological idiosyncrasy; and autograph collectors and handwriting analysts who celebrated signatures that broke copybook rules as marks of personality, revealing the uniqueness of the self. In our time, concludes Thornton, when handwriting skills seem altogether obsolete, calligraphy revivals and calls for old-fashioned penmanship training reflect nostalgia and the rejection of modernity.
"This fine study traces the values and anxieties underlying the pedagogy, practice, and analysis of handwriting in America. It is a highly original and exciting contribution to scholarship, marked by an unusually clear, engaging prose style."--Joan Shelley Rubin, University of Rochester
Tamara Plakins Thornton, associate professor of history, State University of New York at Buffalo, is also the author of Cultivating Gentlemen, published by Yale University Press.
January American History 272 pp. 57 illus. 6 1/8 X 9 1/4 ISBN 0-300-06477-2 $30.00
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin , Volume 32: March 1 through June 30, 1780
Barbara B. Oberg, editor
During the Spring of 1780, Benjamin Franklin was midway through an eight-and-one-half year mission to France. He was in good health, energetic, and occupied with a variety of important ministerial tasks and private pursuits. In this volume, the fifth in the sequence dealing with Franklin's tenure as sole minister to the French court and tenth of a projected twenty volumes covering his years in France, Franklin focuses on diplomatic activities and takes on the role of expressing to France America's pressing needs in this time of economic instability and military stalemate.
Demonstrating wide-ranging talents and activities, Franklin's correspondence is singular in scope and interest. Working purposefully to surmount one difficulty after another, Franklin sought a general prisoner exchange, assisted escaped prisoners, drafted passports, honored bills that were presented to him for payment, and remained involved in the effort to assemble and ship uniforms, arms, and gunpowder to America. During these months he also bought an entire type foundry, purchased two presses, conferred about a script type he had commissioned, received shipments of paper and type from England in spite of the war, designed a method to determine the conductivity of metals, submitted to the Académie des sciences a lengthy memoir on lightning rods for the Strasbourg Cathedral, and penned a jocular essay on "inflammable air" in response to a Royal Academy of Brussels mathematical prize question that he regarded as frivolous.
Ellen R. Cohn and Jonathan R. Dull, senior associate
editors
Karen Duval, associate editor
Leslie J. Lindenauer, assistant editor
Claude A. Lopez, consulting editor
Kate M. Ohno, editorial assistant
Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
August 800 pp. illus. 5 3/4 x 8 5/8
ISBN 0-300-06617-1 $80.00
December 24, 1999