If Dickens was nineteenth-century London personified, Herman Melville was the quintessential American. With a historian’s perspective and a critic’s insight, award-winning author Andrew Delbanco marvelously demonstrates that Melville was very much a m
"Brilliant, passionate, erudite and beautifully written. Stunning and moving ethical interpretation of the history of the concept of evil in American private and public life from the first settlers to the present."--Wendy Doniger, The New York Times Book
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 storie
As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience--an exploratory time for students t
This volume presents nearly 250 of Lincoln's most important speeches, state papers and letters in their entirety. Here are not only the masterpieces- the Gettysburg Address, the Inaugural Addresses, the 1858 Republican State Convention Speech and the Eman
From the most eloquent of American presidents, nearly 400 astute observations on subjects ranging from women to warfare: "Bad promises are better broken than kept"; "Marriage is neither heaven nor hell; it is simply purgatory"; "Whenever I hear anyone arg
The works of Abraham Lincoln preceding the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates illuminate the political career of one of our most courageous presidents and reveal his extraordinary gifts as a writer. Covering the years 1832 to 1858, this Library of America vol
Ranging from finely honed legal argument to dry and sometimes savage humor to private correspondence and political rhetoric of unsurpassed grandeur, the writings collected in this volume are at once the literary testament of the greatest writer ever to oc
Nominated in 1858 by the infant Republican party to oppose Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln challenged the incumbent Democratic senator from Illinois to a series of debates. This volume contains their masterful arguments as well as two speeches, one by
