These essays range from clinical perspectives in psychosis and creativity to critical readings of Joyce and Shakespeare to recent applications of brain research to traditional psychoanalytic notions of the human subject. The richness and variety in this collection bear witness to the continuing impact of psychoanalysis on literary and cultural studies.
All students of the Civil War are indebted to Frank Haskell for his classic description of the battle of Gettysburg. A lieutenant on the staff of John Gibbon, Haskell stood at the focus of the Confederate assault on July 3, 1863. He wrote of the battle in a letter to his brother. When it came to light after the war it became and remains probably the most read and repeated account of Civil War combat written by a participant. It captures wholly the terrible fascination that the Civil War—and Gettysburg—holds for all Americans.
To the degree that the nation had a coherent diplomacy during the first Roosevelt administration, it was based on Hull’s vision of a liberal international economic order. By outlining Hull’s crucial role in the passage and implementation of the Trade Agreements Act, Cautious Visionary will restore Hull’s reputation as one of the major political and diplomatic figures of the first half of our century.
The Lincoln images, originally appearing in such publications as Budget of Fun, Comic Monthly, New York Illustrated News, Phunny Phellow, Southern Punch, and Yankee Notions, significantly expand our understanding of the evolution of public opinion toward Lincoln, the complex dynamics of Civil War, popular art and culture, the media, political caricature, and presidential politics. Lincoln, appealed to illustrators because of his distinctive physical features. (One could scarcely conceive of a similar book on James Buchanan, his immediate predecessor.) Despite ever-improving techniques, Lincoln pictorial prominence competed favorably with any succeeding president in the nineteenth century.
The twenty-one essays collected in “Ungraspable Phantom” are from an international conference held in 2001 celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick. The essays reflect not only a range of problems and approaches but also the cosmopolitan perspective of international scholarship. They offer new thoughts on familiar topics: the novel’s problematic structure, its sources in and reinvention of the Bible, its Lacanian and post-Freudian psychology, and its rhetoric. They also present fresh information on new areas of interest: Melville’s creative process, law and jurisprudence, Freemasonry and labor, race, Latin Americanism, and the Native American.
Warren Brown’s team history of the Chicago White Sox originally appeared in 1952 as part of the celebrated series of major league team histories published by G. P. Putnam. With their colorful prose and delightful narratives, the Putnam books have been described as the Cadillac of team histories and have become prized collectibles for baseball readers and historians.
Congress from the Inside has received high praise from the academic and political worlds for its intimate look at Washington politics. Ideal for both classroom and armchair reading, Brown’s book depicts the inner workings and deal-makings of Congress. He walks the reader through the crafting of legislation and tours the offices and meeting rooms where so much of the work of the legislature is done, introducing us to the names and faces of power. With incisive candor, Brown exposes the strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, diversity and elitism of the U. S. Congress.
Sleepwalking with Mayakovsky is a collection of poems that explores the relationship between chaos and order. “Robert Brown extends a tradition that unites reasons and passion, form and wit, history and memory. These often wry and always thoughtful poems are less acts than dances of the mind, as elegant as they are intelligent.”—William Greenway
Many of the political institutions that would dominate 19th-century America (and the Midwest in particular) originated and first evolved in Ohio. The Pursuit of Public Power explores the origins and nature of political culture here from the American Revolution until the Civil War. Twelve essays examine topics such as voting practices, the role of the state in national economic development, the relationship between religion and politics, the rivalries between individual political leaders and between communities competing for social and economic dominance, the impact of slavery on politics, and the development of stable political systems within a rapidly changing state.
Janice Brown examines Sayer’s major works, beginning with her early poetry and moving through her works of fiction to the dramas, essays, and lectures written in the last years of her life. She illustrates how Sayers used popular genres to teach about sin and redemption, how she redefined the Seven Deadly Sins for the twentieth century, why she stopped writing mysteries, and her application of the concepts of sin and redemption to society as a whole.
