Books written by Andrew Delbanco

  • Melville: His World and Work
    Melville: His World and Work

    The death of Charles Stewart Parnell, on the 7th of October, far from leading to the union of the two Irish political factions, seemed to widen the breach between them. Great bitterness of feeling was exhibited, and several riots ...

  • Melville: His World And Work
    Melville: His World And Work

    Chronicles the life and career of American author Herman Melville, uncovering autobiographical elements in his diverse works, discussing the historical and cultural implications of his writing, and assessing his accomplishments as a writer.

  • Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now
    Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now

    Essays discuss nineteenth and twentieth century American literature, from Henry Adams to Zora Neale Hurston

  • The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War
    The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

    My cousin Bob Wickliffe—the Wickliffe family is a very aristocratic family in Kentucky—died a few months since, worth, it is said, five millions. Then Brown dialed back the mock pride and conveyed his resolve to see the whole slave ...

  • The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil
    The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil

    4; John F. Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Mammers in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Hill and Wang, ... 262 (I owe this reference to Maria Russo); Sheila M. Rothman, Woman's Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and ...

  • Melville: Biographie
    Melville: Biographie

    Melville: Biographie

  • College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be - Updated Edition
    College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be - Updated Edition

    Andrew Dickson White, president of Cornell (1873), quoted in Bok, Universities in the Marketplace, p. 55; Bowen et al., Equity and Excellence, p. 171; Lewis, Excellence without a Soul, p. 252. Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, ...

  • The Puritan Ordeal
    The Puritan Ordeal

    The shortest (and sweetest) accolade was Thomas Morton's: "The more I looked, the more 1 liked it." And though Morton's Puritan neighbors shuddered at his lascivious use of Indian women, at his pimpish salesmanship of his heathen ...

  • The Puritan Ordeal
    The Puritan Ordeal

    In Lincoln's address there is no " I , " a pronoun to which Everett has frequent recourse . And no enemy is ever mentioned . These absences prevent Lincoln's speech from falling into the oppositional structure — erected upon a Manichean ...

  • Melville: His World and Work
    Melville: His World and Work

    A compelling portrait of one of America's leading literary luminaries chronicles the life and career of the quintessentially American author Herman Melville, tracing his life and literary career to uncover autobiographical elements in his ...

  • The Real American Dream
    The Real American Dream

    None : The Life of Abraham Lincoln ( New York : New American Library , 1977 ) , p . 108 . 36. Lincoln , Speech on Kansas - Nebraska Act ( Oct. 16 , 1854 ) , in Fehrenbacher , ed . , Speeches and Writings , i : 315 ; Samuel Johnson ...

  • The Abolitionist Imagination
    The Abolitionist Imagination

    Revisits the nineteenth century abolitionist movement as the embodiment of a driving force in American history, giving a better understanding of the balance between moral fervor and political responsibility.

  • The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War
    The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

    The fugitive slave story illuminates what brought us to war with ourselves and the terrible legacies of slavery that are with us still.

  • The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War
    The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

    "The ... story of how fugitive slaves drove the nation to Civil War"--]cProvided by publisher.

  • The Puritan Ordeal
    The Puritan Ordeal

    More than an ecclesiastical or political history, this book is a vivid description of the earliest American immigrant experience. It depicts the dramatic tale of the seventeenth-century newcomers to our...

  • Writing New England: An Anthology from the Puritans to the Present
    Writing New England: An Anthology from the Puritans to the Present

    With an introductory essay on the origins of New England, a detailed chronology, and explanatory headnotes for each selection, the book is a welcoming introduction to a great American literary tradition and a treasury of vivid writing that ...

  • The Puritans in America
    The Puritans in America

    Exiled from England, the Puritans settled in what Cromwell called "a poor, cold, and useless" place--where they created a body of ideas and aspirations that were essential in the shaping of American religion, politics, and culture.

  • The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope
    The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope

    One of the nation's premier literary scholars takes a broad look at the way Americans have reached beyond worldly desires for a spirituality. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

  • College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be - Second Edition
    College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be - Second Edition

    In College, prominent cultural critic Andrew Delbanco offers a trenchant defense of such an education, and warns that it is becoming a privilege reserved for the relatively rich.

  • The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope
    The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope

    In a time of cultural crisis, when the old stories seem to be faltering, this book offers a lesson in the painstaking remaking of the American dream.