Description

Franklin Library leather edition of Henry Adams's "The Education of Henry Adams," Illustrated With Portraits of the Author's Family, of His Friends, and of Leading Figures of the Day, a Limited edition, one of the 100 GREATEST MASTERPIECES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE series, published in 1980. Bound in black leather, the book has gray moire end leaves, hubbed spine, satin book marker, gold gilding on three edges---in near FINE condition. Henry Adams, who lived from 1838-1918, was born in BOSTON to one of the most distinguished families in America. Young Henry Adams graduated from HARVARD in 1858 and traveled to Berlin to study law and to see the continent. "Education" is much more a record of Adams's introspection than of his deeds. It is an extended meditation on the social, technological, political, and intellectual changes that occurred over Adams's lifetime. Adams concluded that his traditional education failed to help him come to terms with these rapid changes; hence his need for self-education. Adams correctly predicted that the 20th century would see even more explosive changes. He repeatedly laments that his formal education, grounded in the classics, history, and literature, as was then the fashion, did not give him the scientific and mathematical knowledge needed to grasp the scientific breakthroughs of the 1890s and 1900s. "The Education" is narrated in the third person and is frequently sarcastic and humorously self-critical. He was the grandson of the American President JOHN QUINCY ADAMS and great-grandson of President and Founding Father JOHN ADAMS. "The Education of Henry Adams," won the PULITZER PRIZE and was named by The Modern Library as the top English-language nonfiction book of the twentieth century. I offer Combined shipping.