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"Although rooted in history, Refinements of Love is a novel of mystery and elegance and powerful fascination. Neither history nor Henry Adams ever revealed the truth about the strange death in 1885 of Adams's wife, Clover, in their home on Lafayette Square, within walking distance of the White House." "In his classic autobiography. The Education of Henry Adams, this grandson and great-grandson of presidents did not even mention his wife's name or discuss the years of their marriage. Yet Clover Adams's death from poison was a notorious Washington scandal." "The Adamses were at the center of society in the nation's capital; both politicians and literati coveted invitations to their famous salon. Clover's sudden death shocked her contemporaries and continues to fascinate people more than a hundred years later. In a sparkling and dramatic blend of fact and fiction, Sarah Booth Conroy recreates the strange life and mysterious death of Clover Adams and comes up with an astonishing theory regarding its cause." "Secretary of State John Hay called Clover a "bright, intrepid spirit" with "a keen, fine intellect." And he praised her "lofty scorn of all that was mean" and her "social charm" that made the Adamses' home "such a one as Washington never knew before..." Henry James, novelist and friend, declared her "a Voltaire in petticoats." Was Clover's "touch of genius," as James called it, in an age when women's independence was corseted by social custom, responsible for her death?" "In Conroy's enchanting novel of Washington during the Gilded Age, the grand houses, opulent balls, and great art collections form a glittering veneer that masks a dark and sinister reality."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This lively and authoritative volume makes clear that the quest for taste and manners in America has been essential to the serious pursuit of a democratic culture. Spanning the material world from mansions and silverware to etiquette books, city planning, and sentimental novels, Richard L. Bushman shows how a set of values originating in aristocratic court culture gradually permeated almost every stratum of American society and served to prevent the hardening of class consciousness. A work of immense and richly nuanced learning, The Refinement of America newly illuminates every facet of both our artifacts and our values.
The most engaging collection of the French mystics’ writings now available Twenty-first century Christians are now discovering the wisdom of this controversial theologian and spiritual thinker. Fénelon showed how it was possible to have devotion and faith in the original Age of Reason. In many respects, rationality still rules today in religion and culture, and as a result, Fénelon speaks to modern Christians wanting deeper faith and a meaningful inner life. His writings have never been as accessible as they are now in these lively new translations. The Complete Fénelon includes more than one hundred of Fénelon’s letters of spiritual counsel, as well as meditations on eighty-five other topics. Also translated here into English for the first time are Fénelon’s personal reflections on twenty-one seasons and holidays of the Christian year. An introduction from bestselling translator Robert J. Edmonson and in-depth recommended reading and bibliography make this the first place to start in any study of Francois Fénelon.