Fred Kaplan (1) (1937–)
Forfatter af Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer
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Om forfatteren
Fred Kaplan teaches at Queens College and the Graduate Center of CUNY. He is the editor of The Essential Gore Vidal and the author of the biographies Henry James, Dickens, and Thomas Carlyle, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Kaplan lives in vis mere Brooklyn, New York. (Publisher Provided) Fred Kaplan (born 1937) is distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Kaplan grew up in the Bronx and attended Lafayette High School and Brooklyn College. He is the author of several biographies, including his book Thomas Carlyle which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2015, his biography of John Quincy Adams: American Visionary, became listed on the New York Times bestseller list. (Bowker Author Biography) vis mindre
Værker af Fred Kaplan
Lectures on Carlyle & his era 1 eksemplar
Associated Works
Satte nøgleord på
Almen Viden
- Fødselsdato
- 1937
- Køn
- male
- Nationalitet
- USA
- Fødested
- The Bronx, New York, USA
- Bopæl
- New York, New York, USA
Boothbay, Maine, USA - Uddannelse
- Brooklyn College
Columbia University - Erhverv
- professor (English)
- Organisationer
- Queens College (professor of English)
Graduate Center of the City University of New York (professor of English)
Medlemmer
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Associated Authors
Statistikker
- Værker
- 16
- Also by
- 3
- Medlemmer
- 1,590
- Popularitet
- #16,228
- Vurdering
- 3.7
- Anmeldelser
- 19
- ISBN
- 109
- Sprog
- 1
Really interesting book about one of the less successful American presidents, at least considered as a president - only the second (after his own father) to fail to be re-elected. But John Quincy Adams had a long political career both behind him and, uniquely, ahead of him apart from his four not very happy years in the White House; he had been the USA's diplomatic representative to the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia and the United Kingdom, a United States senator, and Secretary of State before becoming president, and then after losing re-election in 1828, went on to serve in the House of Representatives from 1831 until he had a fatal stroke at his desk in the chamber in 1848. (No living US President has ever served in the US House of Representatives; the last were the elder Bush, who served two terms more than fifty years ago, and Gerald Ford, who was a Congressman from 1949 to 1973.)
The climax of his career came in 1841, a decade after he had left the White House, when he defended the captured slaves who had taken control of the Spanish slave ship Amistad and subsequently been captured by the US coastguard; he successfully convinced the Supreme Court that the treaty with Spain which he himself had negotiated did not apply here, and exposed some embarrassing inconsistencies in the paperwork supplied by the Executive branch, as a result of which the Africans were liebrated back to Africa. He had always been viscerally opposed to slavery, though felt he could not say so out loud until near the end of his career.
Adams, like his father, left a lot of writing behind, including a lot of poetry which Kaplan integrates into the narrative. A lot of it is written to his deeply loved wife Louisa, who was born and brought up in London, though by American parents; she was the only First Lady born outside what are now the United States before Melania Trump. He was in St Petersburg during the French invasion of Russia in 1812. He negotiated the Spanish cession of Florida to the United States. He wasn't a good party politician, which is why he barely scraped into office in the Presidency (the only President apart from Jefferson to be elected by the House due to lack of majority in the electoral college). But his intellectual ability was clearly valued even by those who opposed him politically.
A good book from which I learned a lot.… (mere)