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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samuel Eliot Morison traces the roots of American universities back to Europe, providing "a lively contemporary perspective...a realistic picture of the founding of the first American university north of the Rio Grande" [Lewis Gannett, New York Herald Tribune].
A university press is a curious institution, dedicated to the dissemination of learning yet apart from the academic structure; a publishing firm that is in business, but not to make money; an arm of the university that is frequently misunderstood and occasionally attacked by faculty and administration. Max Hall here chronicles the early stages and first sixty years of Harvard University Press in a rich and entertaining book that is at once Harvard history, publishing history, printing history, business history, and intellectual history. The tale begins in 1638 when the first printing press arrived in British North America. It became the property of Harvard College and remained so for nearly half a century. Hall sketches the various forerunners of the "real" Harvard University Press, founded in 1913, and then follows the ups and downs of its first six decades, during which the Press published steadily if not always serenely a total of 4,500 books. He describes the directors and others who left their stamp on the Press or guided its fortunes during these years. And he gives the stories behind such enduring works as Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being, Giedion's Space, Time, and Architecture, Langer's Philosophy in a New Key, and Kelly's Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings.
Samuel Eliot Morison sat down to tell the whole story of Harvard informally and briefly, with the same genial humor and ability to see the human implications of past events that characterize his larger, multi-volume series on Harvard.
If Harvard can be said to have a literature all its own, then few universities can equal it in scope. Here lies the reason for this anthology--a collection of what Harvard men (teachers, students, graduates) have written about Harvard in the more than three centuries of its history. The emphasis is upon entertainment, upon readability; and the selections have been arranged to show something of the many variations of Harvard life. For all Harvard men--and that part of the general public which is interested in American college life--here is a rich treasury. In such a Harvard collection one may expect to find the giants of Harvard's last 75 years, Eliot, Lowell, and Conant, attempting a definition of what Harvard means. But there are many other familiar names - Henry Dunster, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Henry Adams, Charles M. Flandrau, William and Henry James, Owen Wister, Thomas Wolfe, John P. Marquaud. Here is Mistress Eaton's confession about the bad fish served to the wretched students of Harvard's early years; here too is President Holyoke's account of the burning of Harvard Hall; a student's description of his trip to Portsmouth with that aged and Johnsonian character, Tutor Henry Flynt; Cleveland Amory's retelling of the murder of Dr. George Parkman; Mayor Quiney's story of what happened in Cambridge when Andrew Jackson came to get an honorary degree; Alistair Cooke's commentary on the great Harvard-Yale cricket match of 1951. There are many sorts of Harvard men in this book--popular fellows like Hammersmith, snobs like Bertie and Billy, the sensitive and the lonely like Edwin Arlington Robinson and Thomas Wolfe, and independent thinkers like John Reed. Teachers and pupils, scholars and sports, heroes and rogues pass across the Harvard stage through the struggles and the tragedies to the moments of triumph like the Bicentennial or the visit of Winston Churchill. And speaking of visits, there are the visitors too--the first impressions of Harvard set down by an assortment of travelers as various as Dickens, Trollope, Rupert Brooke, Harriet Martineau, and Francisco de Miranda, the "precursor of Latin American independence." For the Harvard addict this volume is indispensable. For the general reader it is the sort of book that goes with a good living-room fire or the blissful moments of early to bed.
This history of Harvard's architecture examines the Federal architecture of Charles Bulfinch, H.H. Richardson's Romanesque buildings, the Imperial manner reflected in Widener Library, and the work of other architects such as Charles McKim, Gropius and Le Corbusier.
Since the Viking ascendancy in the Middle Ages, the Atlantic has shaped the lives of people who depend upon it for survival. And just as surely, people have shaped the Atlantic. In his innovative account of this interdependency, W. Jeffrey Bolster, a historian and professional seafarer, takes us through a millennium-long environmental history of our impact on one of the largest ecosystems in the world. While overfishing is often thought of as a contemporary problem, Bolster reveals that humans were transforming the sea long before factory trawlers turned fishing from a handliner's art into an industrial enterprise. The western Atlantic's legendary fishing banks, stretching from Cape Cod to Newfoundland, have attracted fishermen for more than five hundred years. Bolster follows the effects of this siren's song from its medieval European origins to the advent of industrialized fishing in American waters at the beginning of the twentieth century. Blending marine biology, ecological insight, and a remarkable cast of characters, from notable explorers to scientists to an army of unknown fishermen, Bolster tells a story that is both ecological and human: the prelude to an environmental disaster. Over generations, harvesters created a quiet catastrophe as the sea could no longer renew itself. Bolster writes in the hope that the intimate relationship humans have long had with the ocean, and the species that live within it, can be restored for future generations.
"This collection of original historical essays examines aspects of the relationship between science and the nation's oldest academic institution. This is history as viewed from the varying perspectives of a group of scholars for whom science at Harvard University is a significant component of their ongoing research. Thus, the essays are of specialist interest, while collectively the volume is a case study of science in an institutional setting. In conducting their research, the authors have used a wealth of primary sources from the Harvard Archives and other repositories." "The volume opens with a thematic introduction by Margaret Rossiter reflecting the picture of Harvard science drawn in the several papers in the volume, while suggesting ways in which a study of Harvard relates to and illuminates the history of science in America." "The subsequent papers follow a generally chronological sequence, beginning with Sara Schechner Genuth's study of attitudes toward comets in relation to early Harvard University programs and functions. Mary Ann James examines the beginnings of applied science at Harvard, and Bruce Sinclair continues that theme with a comparative study of MIT and Harvard." "Toby Appel's paper on zoologist Jeffries Wyman identifies the special part that personal character plays in institutional history. Curtis Hinsley concentrates on facilities and shows how the Peabody Museum gave rise to teaching in anthropology. David Livingstone's biographical treatment of Nathaniel S. Shaler reveals a number of intellectual strands running through the University in the late nineteenth century, and John Parascandola's paper on L. J. Henderson likewise deals with a figure of wide influence and many interests, ranging from biochemistry to sociology. The latter topic leads to Lawrence Nichols's account of the rise of sociology at Harvard. A view of the internal tensions within psychology are seen in Rodney Triplet's study of Henry A. Murray." "I. Bernard Cohen examines the relations among Howard Aiken, IBM, and Harvard in the development of the Mark I computer, while Peggy Kidwell studies the Observatory community during World War II and its response to national defense and a developing federal support system." "Finally, Clark Elliott considers the history of Harvard science as a field for study through a review of published literature and archival sources and makes suggestions for further investigation."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
