検索キーワード： 著者 "David S. Reynolds" すべてのカテゴリー

In the bitterly polarized decades leading up to the American Civil War, it was commonplace to argue that America’s strife could be traced back all the way to the arrival of two ships less than a year apart—the ship that brought the first enslaved Africans to Jamestown in 1619, and the Mayflower, bringing the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock in 1620. Frederick Douglass used the two ships to frame the conflict in four major speeches, and he was hardly alone.

In this wide-ranging, brilliantly researched work, David S. Reynolds traces the factors that made Uncle Tom’s Cabin the most influential novel ever written by an American. Upon its 1852 publication, the novel’s vivid depiction of slavery polarized its American readership, ultimately widening the rift that led to the Civil War. Reynolds also charts the novel’s afterlife - including its adaptation into plays, films, and consumer goods - revealing its lasting impact on American entertainment, advertising, and race relations.

Few historical figures are as intriguing as John Brown, the controversial Abolitionist who used terrorist tactics against slavery and single-handedly changed the course of American history. This brilliant biography of Brown (1800-1859) by the prize-winning critic and cultural biographer David S. Reynolds brings to life the Puritan warrior who gripped slavery by the throat and triggered the Civil War. When does principled resistance become anarchic brutality? How can a murderer be viewed as a heroic freedom fighter? The case of John Brown opens windows on these timely issues.

Abraham Lincoln did not come out of nowhere. But if he was shaped by his times, he also managed at his life's fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life. The measure of that life will always be part of our American education.