Mourning Lincoln

Mourning Lincoln
Author: Martha Hodes
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2015-02-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300213565

A historian examines how everyday people reacted to the president’s assassination in this “highly original, lucidly written book” (James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom). The news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, 1865, just days after Confederate surrender, astounded a war-weary nation. Massive crowds turned out for services and ceremonies. Countless expressions of grief and dismay were printed in newspapers and preached in sermons. Public responses to the assassination have been well chronicled, but this book is the first to delve into the personal and intimate responses of everyday people—northerners and southerners, soldiers and civilians, black people and white, men and women, rich and poor. Exploring diaries, letters, and other personal writings penned during the spring and summer of 1865, historian Martha Hodes captures the full range of reactions to the president’s death—far more diverse than public expressions would suggest. She tells a story of shock, glee, sorrow, anger, blame, and fear. “’Tis the saddest day in our history,” wrote a mournful man. It was “an electric shock to my soul,” wrote a woman who had escaped from slavery. “Glorious News!” a Lincoln enemy exulted, while for the black soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, it was all “too overwhelming, too lamentable, too distressing” to absorb. Longlisted for the National Book Award, Mourning Lincoln brings to life a key moment of national uncertainty and confusion, when competing visions of America’s future proved irreconcilable and hopes for racial justice in the aftermath of the Civil War slipped from the nation’s grasp. Hodes masterfully explores the tragedy of Lincoln’s assassination in human terms—terms that continue to stagger and rivet us today.

The King Maker

The King Maker
Author: Geordie Greig
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1497629012

“A treasure trove that throws new and entertaining light” on the friendship between the WWII-era king and the man who inspired The King’s Speech (The Times, London). Louis Greig, a war hero and rugby international, entered the privileged world of the British royal family as mentor, physician, and friend to a young and hesitant Prince Albert, the man who became King George VI and whose challenges were so vividly brought to life in the award-winning film The King’s Speech. Greig’s influence helped to guide the prince from a stammering, shy schoolboy to become one of the most respected constitutional monarchs, seeing the nation through the Second World War and bringing the monarchy closer to the people. Geordie Greig, grandson of Louis Greig, has drawn on private family papers and public archives to reveal an intimate friendship that lasted almost half a century.

The Chinese Lady

The Chinese Lady
Author: Nancy E. Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2022
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0197581986

In 1834, a Chinese woman named Afong Moy arrived in America as both a prized guest and an advertisement for a merchant firm--a promotional curiosity with bound feet and a celebrity used to peddle exotic wares from the East. This first biography of Afong Moy explores how she shaped Americans' impressions of China, while living as a stranger in a foreign land.

R.D. Laing: His Work and its Relevance for Sociology (RLE Social Theory)

R.D. Laing: His Work and its Relevance for Sociology (RLE Social Theory)
Author: Martin Howarth-Williams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2014-08-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317651235

This study, by a sociologist, provides the most rigorous and comprehensive review to appear so far of R. D. Laing's work and theoretical development. Martin Howarth-Williams considers that Laing's insights into such controversial issues as the divided self and the politics of the family are of an importance that transcends their basis in clinical psychiatry and that they have a special significance for sociology. Using the Progressive/Regressive Method of Jean-Paul Sartre, the author illuminates the internal coherence of Laing's aims through the various stages of his work and shows how his ideas are shaped by consistent philosophic presuppositions and influences underlying his work. To give as complete an account as possible of Laing's interests and to relate them to the broad stream of his thought, the author explores Laing's involvement in other non-psychiatric realms – especially politics, religion and eastern mysticism. Material has been secured from a wide variety of recent sources which include interviews, films, TV appearances and the author's own personal recollections of informal talks given by Laing. In the final section of the book Martin Howarth-Williams isolates the concept of 'Intelligibility', which he demonstrates to be the unifying theme central to Laing's theory and shows how this can be used as the basis for a critique of recent developments in sociological theory as well as a starting point towards a genuinely dialectical sociology.

Mourning the Presidents

Mourning the Presidents
Author: Lindsay M. Chervinsky
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2023-02-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813949300

The death of a chief executive, regardless of the circumstances—sudden or expected, still in office or decades later—is always a moment of reckoning and reflection. Mourning the Presidents brings together renowned and emerging scholars to examine how different generations and communities of Americans have eulogized and remembered US presidents since George Washington’s death in 1799. Over twelve individually illuminating chapters, this volume offers a unique approach to understanding American culture and politics by uncovering parallels between different generations of mourners, highlighting distinct experiences, and examining what presidential deaths can tell us about societal fissures at various critical points in the nation’s history, right up to the present moment.