Dead Certainties: Unwarranted SpeculationsLike his The Embarrassment of Riches and the bestselling Citizens, Simon Schama's latest book is both history and literature of immense stylishness and ambition. But Dead Certainties goes beyond these more conventional histories to address the deeper enigmas that confront a student of the past. In order to do so, Schama reconstructs -- and at times reinvents -- two ambiguous deaths: the first, that of General James Wolfe at the battle of Quebec in 1759; the second, in 1849, that of George Parkman, an eccentric Boston brahmin whose murder by an impecunious Harvard professor in 1849 was a grisly reproach to the moral sanctity of his society. Out of these stories -- with all of their bizarre coincidences and contradictions -- Schama creates a dazzling and supremely vital work of historical imagination. |
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Page 25
... West's histories to occasion serious ob- jection . On the strength of the works exhibited at Spring Gardens and , more important , of the King's favour , the American had in fact become an Academician . But reports of West's intentions ...
... West's histories to occasion serious ob- jection . On the strength of the works exhibited at Spring Gardens and , more important , of the King's favour , the American had in fact become an Academician . But reports of West's intentions ...
Page 26
... West , made the story of Reynolds's and West's encounter famous . No doubt ( since Galt wrote in accordance with West's elaborate wishes ) it gives a more heroic account of the artist's uncom- promising determination than may have ...
... West , made the story of Reynolds's and West's encounter famous . No doubt ( since Galt wrote in accordance with West's elaborate wishes ) it gives a more heroic account of the artist's uncom- promising determination than may have ...
Page 37
... West's rhetoric imprinted in the popular mind it never manages to become more than a footnote to his achievement . After West , nothing could dispel the odour of sanctity that lay over Wolfe's memory . When George Townshend published a ...
... West's rhetoric imprinted in the popular mind it never manages to become more than a footnote to his achievement . After West , nothing could dispel the odour of sanctity that lay over Wolfe's memory . When George Townshend published a ...
Contents
In Command | 21 |
Deep in the Forest | 40 |
On the Heights of Abraham | 66 |
Copyright | |
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