Common sense has always been a cornerstone of American politics. In 1776, Tom Paine’s vital pamphlet with that title sparked the American Revolution. And today, common sense—the wisdom of ordinary people, knowledge so self-evident that it is beyond debate—remains a powerful political ideal, utilized alike by George W. Bush’s aw-shucks articulations and Barack Obama’s down-to-earth reasonableness. But far from self-evident is where our faith in common sense comes from and how its populist logic has shaped modern democracy. Common Sense: A Political History is the first book to explore this essential political phenomenon. The story begins in the aftermath of England’s Glorious Revolution, when common sense first became a political ideal worth struggling over. Sophia Rosenfeld’s accessible and insightful account then wends its way across two continents and multiple centuries, revealing the remarkable individuals who appropriated the old, seemingly universal idea of common sense and the new strategic uses they made of it. Paine may have boasted that common sense is always on the side of the people and opposed to the rule of kings, but Rosenfeld demonstrates that common sense has been used to foster demagoguery and exclusivity as well as popular sovereignty. She provides a new account of the transatlantic Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions, and offers a fresh reading on what the eighteenth century bequeathed to the political ferment of our own time. Far from commonsensical, the history of common sense turns out to be rife with paradox and surprise.
"This is the first volume of a four-volume set that will reprint in their entirety the texts of 72 pamphlets relating to the Anglo-American controversy that were published in America in the years 1750-1776. They have been selected from the corpus of the pamphlet literature on the basis of their importance in the growth of American political and social ideas, their role in the debate with England over constitutional rights, and their literary merit. All of the best known pamphlets of the period, such as James Otis' Rights of the British Colonies (1764), John Dickinson's Farmers Letters (1768), and Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776) are to be included. In addition there are lesser known ones particularly important in the development of American constitutional thought: Stephen Johnson's Some Important Observations (1766), John Joachim Zublys An Humble Enquiry (1769), Ebenezer Baldwins An Appendix Stating the Heavy Grievances (1774), and Four Letters on Interesting Subjects (1776). There are also pamphlets illustrative of the sheer vituperation of the Revolutionary polemics, and others selected for their more elevated literary merit. Both sides of the Anglo-American dispute and all genres of expression -- poetry, dramatic dialogues, sermons, treatises, documentary collections, political "position papers" -- that appeared in this form are included. Each pamphlet is introduced by an essay written by the editor containing a biographical sketch of the author of the document, an analysis of the circumstances that led to the writing of it, and an interpretation of its contents. The texts are edited for the convenience of the modern reader according to a scheme that preserves scrupulously the integrity of every word written but that frees the text from the encumbrances of 18th-century printing practices. All references to writings, people, and events that are not obvious to the informed modern reader are identified in the editorial apparatus and where necessary explained in detailed notes. This first volume of the set contains the texts of 14 pamphlets through the year 1765. It presents, in addition, a book-length General Introduction by Mr. Bailyn on the ideology of the American Revolution. In the seven chapters of this essay the ideological origins and development of the Revolutionary movement are analyzed in the light of the study of the pamphlet literature that went into the preparation of these volumes. Mr. Bailyn explains that close analysis of this literature allows one to penetrate deeply into the colonists understanding of the events of their time; to grasp more clearly than is otherwise possible the sources of their ideas and their motives in rebelling; and, above all, to see the subtle, fundamental transformation of 18th-century constitutional thought that took place during these years of controversy and that became basic doctrine in America thereafter. Mr. Bailyn stresses particularly the importance in the development of American thought of the writings of a group of early 18th-century English radicals and opposition politicians who transmitted to the colonists most directly the 17th-century tradition of anti-authoritarianism born in the upheaval of the English Civil War. In the context of this 17th- and early 18th-century tradition one sees the political importance in the Revolutionary movement of concepts the 20th century has generally dismissed as mere propaganda and rhetoric: 'slavery,' 'conspiracy,' 'corruption.' It was the meaning these concepts imparted to the events of the time, Mr. Bailyn suggests, as well as the famous Lockean notions of natural rights and social and governmental compacts, that accounts for the origins and the basic characteristics of the American Revolution."--Publisher's description.
The subject of Michael Warner's book is the rise of a nation. America, he shows, became a nation by developing a new kind of reading public, where one becomes a citizen by taking one's place as writer or reader. At heart, the United States is a republic of letters, and its birth can be dated from changes in the culture of printing in the early eighteenth century. The new and widespread use of print media transformed the relations between people and power in a way that set in motion the republican structure of government we have inherited. Examining books, pamphlets, and circulars, he merges theory and concrete analysis to provide a multilayered view of American cultural development.
Milton's Great Poems--Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes--are here examined in the light of his lifelong commitment to the English revolutionary cause. The poems, Joan Bennett shows, reflect the issues Milton had dealt with in theological and public policy debate, foreign diplomacy, and propaganda; moreover, they work innovatively with these issues, reaching in epic and tragedy answers that his pamphlets and tracts of the past twenty years had only partially achieved. The central issue is the nature and possibility of human freedom, or "Christian liberty." Related questions are the nature of human rationality, the meaning of law, of history, of individuality, of society, and--everywhere--the problem of evil. The book offers a revisionist position in the history of ideas, arguing that Renaissance Christian humanism in England descended not from Tudor to Stuart Anglicanism but from Tudor Anglicanism to revolutionary Puritanism. Close readings are offered of texts by Richard Hooker, Milton, and a range of writers before and during the revolutionary period. Not only theological and political positions but also political actions taken by the authors are compared. Milton's poems are studied in the light of these analyses. The concept of "radical Christian humanism" moves current Milton criticism beyond the competing conceptions of Milton as the poet of democratic liberalism and the prophet of revolutionary absolutism. Milton's radical Christian humanism was built upon pre-modern conceptions and experiences of reason that are not alien to our time. It stemmed from, and resulted in, a religious commitment to political process which his poems embody and illuminate.
Modern political culture features a deep-seated faith in the power of numbers. But quantitative evidence has not always been revered, as William Deringer shows. After the 1688 Revolution, as Britons learned to fight by the numbers, their enthusiasm for figures arose not from efforts to find objective truths but from the turmoil of politics itself.
Reading the Early Republic focuses attention on the forgotten dynamism of thought in the founding era. In every case, the documents, novels, pamphlets, sermons, journals, and slave narratives of the early American nation are richer and more intricate than modern readers have perceived. Rebellion, slavery, and treason--the mingled stories of the Revolution--still haunt national thought. Robert Ferguson shows that the legacy that made the country remains the idea of what it is still trying to become. He cuts through the pervading nostalgia about national beginnings to recapture the manic-depressive tones of its first expression. He also has much to say about the reconfiguration of charity in American life, the vital role of the classical ideal in projecting an unthinkable continental republic, the first manipulations of the independent American woman, and the troubled integration of civic and commercial understandings in the original claims of prosperity as national virtue. Reading the Early Republic uses the living textual tradition against history to prove its case. The first formative writings are more than sacred artifacts. They remain the touchstones of the durable promise and the problems in republican thought
"A bibliography of poetry composed in what is now the United States of America and printed in the form of books or pamphlets before 1821"--Provided by publisher.
"Eric Kester has written the kind of book I wish I had the courage and insight to write. His illuminations on everything from Larry Summers to the Harvard football team to cheating, tourists, and competitiveness are dead–on. His writing has also provided me with some of the best laugh–out–loud moments I've had in recent years. God knows Harvard could use some humor!" —PETER OLSON, FORMER CEO OF RANDOM HOUSE, HARVARD GRADUATE, AND CURRENT HARVARD PROFESSOR One of the most thrilling and terrifying days of your life is the first day of college, when you step onto campus filled with the excitement of all the possibilities ahead—and panic about if you'll make it and how you'll fit in. Now imagine that same feeling, but you're in the middle of the lawn at the world's most prestigious university. In your underwear. Thus begins one of the craziest years ever at Harvard, in which Eric Kester finds himself in a cheating scheme, trying to join a prestigious Finals Club, and falling for a stunning type-A brunette...who happened to be standing there in shock that first day when he made his red-faced stroll across the Harvard Yard. That Book about Harvard is the hilarious and heartwarming story of trying to find your place in a new world, the unending quest to fit in, and how the moments that change your life often happen in the most unexpected ways. Eric Kester graduated from Harvard in 2008, where he wrote a popular column for the undergraduate newspaper, the Crimson. Now a featured writer for CollegeHumor.com, Eric has also contributed to the Boston Globe, someEcards.com, and Dorkly.com.
The dramatic story of Mehdi Hasan and Ellen Donnelly, whose marriage convulsed high society in nineteenth-century India and whose notorious trial and fall reverberated throughout the British Empire, setting the benchmark for Victorian scandals. In April 1892, a damning pamphlet circulated in the south Indian city of Hyderabad, the capital of the largest and wealthiest princely state in the British Raj. An anonymous writer charged Mehdi Hasan, an aspiring Muslim lawyer from the north, and Ellen Donnelly, his Indian-born British wife, with gross sexual misconduct and deception. The scandal that ensued sent shock waves from Calcutta to London. Who wrote this pamphlet, and was it true? Mehdi and Ellen had risen rapidly among Hyderabad’s elites. On a trip to London they even met Queen Victoria. Not long after, a scurrilous pamphlet addressed to “the ladies of Hyderabad” charged the couple with propagating a sham marriage for personal gain. Ellen, it was claimed, had been a prostitute, and Mehdi was accused of making his wife available to men who could advance his career. To avenge his wife and clear his name, Mehdi filed suit against the pamphlet’s printer, prompting a trial that would alter their lives. Based on private letters, courtroom transcripts, secret government reports, and scathing newspaper accounts, Benjamin Cohen’s riveting reconstruction of the couple’s trial and tribulations lays bare the passions that ran across racial lines and the intimate betrayals that doomed the Hasans. Filled with accusations of midnight trysts and sexual taboos, An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad is a powerful reminder of the perils facing those who tried to rewrite society’s rules. In the struggle of one couple, it exposes the fault lines that would soon tear a world apart.
Alexander Sedgwick presents an intensive examination of the political problems confronting French Royalists, Catholics, and conservative Republicans in their attempt to form a conservative party, within the framework of the Republic, in the decade dominated by the Panama Scandal and the Dreyfus Affair. Basing his analysis on unpublished papers and contemporary newspapers, pamphlets, and reviews often neglected in studies of the period, the author demonstrates that the failure of the movement can be traced to endemic French political attitudes, and that the Ralliement has significant historical implications which have not been generally recognized.
