Bøger af Sean Wilentz

This title provides a chronicle of New York City's labour strife, social movements, and political turmoil in the eras of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Twenty years after its initial publication, Wilentz has added a new preface that takes stock of his own thinking, then and now, about New York City and the rise of the American working class.

Winner of the Bancroft Award: "Monumental...a tour de force...awesome in its coverage of political events."-Gordon Wood, New York Times Book Review

In the autumn of 1834, New York City was awash with rumors of a strange religious cult operating nearby, centered around a mysterious, self-styled prophet named Matthias. It was said that Matthias the Prophet was stealing money from one of his followers; then came reports of lascivious sexual relations, based on odd teachings of matched spirits, apostolic priesthoods, and the inferiority of women. At its climax, the rumors transformed into legal charges, as the Prophet was arrested for the murder of a once highly-regarded Christian gentleman who had fallen under his sway. By the time the story played out, it became one of the nation's first penny-press sensations, casting a peculiar but revealing light on the sexual and spiritual tensions of the day. In The Kingdom of Matthias, the distinguished historians Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz brilliantly recapture this forgotten story, imbuing their richly researched account with the dramatic force of a novel. In this book, the strange tale of Matthias the Prophet provides a fascinating window into the turbulent movements of the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening--movements which swept up great numbers of evangelical Americans and gave rise to new sects like the Mormons. Into this teeming environment walked a down-and-out carpenter named Robert Matthews, who announced himself as Matthias, prophet of the God of the Jews. His hypnotic spell drew in a cast of unforgettable characters--the meekly devout businessman Elijah Pierson, who once tried to raise his late wife from the dead; the young attractive Christian couple, Benjamin Folger and his wife Ann (who seduced the woman-hating Prophet); and the shrewd ex-slave Isabella Van Wagenen, regarded by some as "e;the most wicked of the wicked."e; None was more colorful than the Prophet himself, a bearded, thundering tyrant who gathered his followers into an absolutist household, using their money to buy an elaborate, eccentric wardrobe, and reordering their marital relations. By the time the tensions within the kingdom exploded into a clash with the law, Matthias had become a national scandal. In the hands of Johnson and Wilentz, the strange tale of the Prophet and his kingdom comes vividly to life, recalling scenes from recent experiences at Jonestown and Waco. They also reveal much about a formative period in American history, showing the connections among rapid economic change, sex and race relations, politics, popular culture, and the rich varieties of American religious experience.

I bogen her placerer forfatteren Bob Dylan og hans værk centralt i USA's moderne historie. Udgangspunktet er det venstreorienterede musikmiljø i New York under den store depression og 2. Verdenskrig, og Woodie Guthries, Pete Seegers og folkemusikkens indflydelse på den unge Dylan. Så følger mødet med Allen Ginsberg og beatgenerationen, de store koncerter i 1960’erne og 70’erne og indspilningerne af alle de kendteste albums, ikke mindst 'Blonde on Blonde'. Dylans senere optagethed af 1920’ernes sorte bluesmusik og særligt Blind Willie McTell fører frem til hans kristne periode, der igen trækker linjer tilbage til den amerikanske borgerkrig og de mange religiøse retninger og vækkelser. Bogen fortæller undervejs om The Never Ending Tour, Dylans bøger, malerier og film og slutter med de seneste indspilninger bl.a. 'Modern Times', 'The Bootleg Series' og 'Together Through Life'.

"Wilentz brings a lifetime of learning and a mastery of political history to this brilliant book."--David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceA Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year Americans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of slavery. In this essential reconsideration of the creation and legacy of our nation's founding document, Sean Wilentz reveals the tortured compromises that led the Founders to abide slavery without legitimizing it, a deliberate ambiguity that fractured the nation seventy years later. Contesting the Southern proslavery version of the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass pointed to the framers' refusal to validate what they called "property in man." No Property in Man has opened a fresh debate about the political and legal struggles over slavery that began during the Revolution and concluded with the Civil War. It drives straight to the heart of the single most contentious issue in all of American history. "Revealing and passionately argued... [Wilentz] insists that because the framers did not sanction slavery as a matter of principle, the antislavery legacy of the Constitution has been...'misconstrued' for over 200 years."--Khalil Gibran Muhammad, New York Times "Wilentz's careful and insightful analysis helps us understand how Americans who hated slavery, such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, could come to see the Constitution as an ally in their struggle."--Eric Foner

For more than 40 years starting in the late 1950s, Fred W. McDarrah, the staff photographer for New York's Village Voice, covered the city's downtown scenes, producing an unmatched and encyclopedic visual record of people, movements, and events. McDarrah frequented the bars, cafes, and galleries where writers, artists, and musicians gathered, and he was welcome in the apartments and lofts of the city's avant-garde cultural aristocracy. Through his lens, we see the legendary birth of ideas and attitudes that continue to shape the character and allure of New York today.

The past thirty-five years have marked an era of conservatism. Although briefly interrupted in the late 1970s and temporarily reversed in the 1990s, a powerful surge from the right dominated American politics and government from 1974 to 2008. In The Age of Reagan, Sean Wilentz, one of our nation's leading historians, accounts for how a conservative movement once deemed marginal managed to seize power and hold it, and describes the momentous consequences that followed. Vivid, authoritative, and illuminating from start to finish, The Age of Reagan is a groundbreaking chronicle of America's political history since the fall of Nixon.

A brilliantly written and groundbreaking book about Dylan's music - now the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2016 - and its musical, political and cultural roots in early 20th-century AmericaGrowing up in Greenwich Village in the 1960s Sean Wilentz discovered the music of Bob Dylan as a young teenager.