<p><span class="deck"> If Buchanan had met the Kansas problem firmly we might have avoided civil war<br />
The fourth in a series on TIMES OF TRIAL IN AMERICAN STATECRAFT </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> Margaret Fuller very possibly spoke the truth, and the literary men of the age both admired and shied away from her</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> Bronson Alcott and his transcendental friends hardly ever stopped talking. It left almost no time for mundane things like food and shelter</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> On a new bridge that arched the flood Their toes by April freezes curled, There the embattled committee stood, Beset, it seemed, by half the world.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">An exasperated Ralph Waldo Emerson said of his rudest, most rebellious—and most brilliant—protégé. Their turbulent relationship survived what one newspaper called “the grossest violation of literary comity and courtesy that ever passed under our notice.”</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">One of America s truly great men—scientist, philosopher, and literary genius—forged his character in the throes of adversity</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck">The idealists who founded this utopian colony were singularly well-versed in mystical philosophy and singularly ignorant about farming.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">Many Americans, Hemingway among them, thought him a solemn prig. But Emerson’s biographer discovers a man who found strength and music in the language of the streets.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> From Fort Ticonderoga to the Plaza Hotel, from Appomattox Courthouse to Bugsy Siegel’s weird rose garden in Las Vegas, the present-day scene is enriched by knowledge of the American past</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck"> Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody managed to extend the boundaries that cramped the lives of nineteenth-century women. Elizabeth introduced the kindergarten movement to America, Mary developed a new philosophy of mothering that we now take for granted, and Sophia was liberated from invalidism by her passionate love for her husband.</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck">His speech was called “our intellectual Declaration of Independence.” Its theme was the universe itself; its hero, Man Thinking. Now, one hundred and seventy-five years later, a noted scholar sees Emerson’s great vision as both more beleaguered and more urgent than ever.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">The author walks us through literary Boston at its zenith. But Boston being what it is, we also come across the Revolution, ward politics, and the great fire.</span></p>
