New Essays on The Education of Henry Adams

This volume in The American Novel series addresses the established reputation of The Education of Henry Adams as a classic work of American autobiography and canonical work of American literature. Examining The Education in terms of early twentieth-century American attitudes to education, gender, US foreign policy, and historiography, these essays add considerably to our understanding of the Education as an expression of its time. The approaches of the four contributors - John Carlos Rowe, Brook Thomas, Martha Banta, and Howard Horwitz - complement each other, even though the specific topic explored by each scholar is distinctly different from the others. The result is a remarkably coherent volume that explains in original ways the continuing importance of The Education of Henry Adams as literature and history.

• Broad appeal for students and readers of Henry Adams • Interdisciplinary approach incorporates history, politics, gender, education • Distinguished group of scholars writing accessibly

1. Introduction John Carlos Rowe; 2. The education of an American classic: the survival of failure Brook Thomas; 3. Being a Begonia in a man’s world Martha Banta; 4. Henry Adams’s Education in the age of Imperialism John Carlos Rowe; 5. The Education and the salvation of history Howard Horwitz.