In the 1790s, a single conversational circle—the Friendly Club—united New York City's most ambitious young writers, and in Republic of Intellect, Bryan Waterman uses an innovative blend of literary criticism and historical narrative to re-create the club's intellectual culture. The story of the Friendly Club reveals the mutually informing conditions of authorship, literary association, print culture, and production of knowledge in a specific time and place—the tumultuous, tenuous world of post-revolutionary New York City. More than any similar group in the early American republic, the Friendly Club occupied a crossroads—geographical, professional, and otherwise—of American literary and intellectual culture. Waterman argues that the relationships among club members' novels, plays, poetry, diaries, legal writing, and medical essays lead to important first examples of a distinctively American literature and also illuminate the local, national, and transatlantic circuits of influence and information that club members called "the republic of intellect." He addresses topics ranging from political conspiracy in the gothic novels of Charles Brockden Brown to the opening of William Dunlap's Park Theatre, from early American debates on gendered conversation to the publication of the first American medical journal. Voluntary association and print culture helped these young New Yorkers, Waterman concludes, to produce a broader and more diverse post-revolutionary public sphere than scholars have yet recognized.

Women of the Republic views the American Revolution through women's eyes. Previous histories have rarely recognized that the battle for independence was also a woman's war. The "women of the army" toiled in army hospitals, kitchens, and laundries. Civilian women were spies, fund raisers, innkeepers, suppliers of food and clothing. Recruiters, whether patriot or tory, found men more willing to join the army when their wives and daughters could be counted on to keep the farms in operation and to resist enchroachment from squatters. "I have Don as much to Carrey on the warr as maney that Sett Now at the healm of government," wrote one impoverished woman, and she was right. Women of the Republic is the result of a seven-year search for women's diaries, letters, and legal records. Achieving a remarkable comprehensiveness, it describes women's participation in the war, evaluates changes in their education in the late eighteenth century, describes the novels and histories women read and wrote, and analyzes their status in law and society. The rhetoric of the Revolution, full of insistence on rights and freedom in opposition to dictatorial masters, posed questions about the position of women in marriage as well as in the polity, but few of the implications of this rhetoric were recognized. How much liberty and equality for women? How much pursuit of happiness? How much justice? When American political theory failed to define a program for the participation of women in the public arena, women themselves had to develop an ideology of female patriotism. They promoted the notion that women could guarantee the continuing health of the republic by nurturing public-spirited sons and husbands. This limited ideology of "Republican Motherhood" is a measure of the political and social conservatism of the Revolution. The subsequent history of women in America is the story of women's efforts to accomplish for themselves what the Revolution did not.

Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America

Candice Millard chronicles the life of President James A. Garfield, from his upbringing to his untimely death. Garfield's short time in office was devoted to cleaning up the corruption that was rife in a country still reeling from the Civil War. However, everything changed when Garfield was shot in the back by a disgruntled office worker. While the president's health slowly declined, a power struggle erupted over control of the administration, and the country's fate hung in the balance.

"In this book, Diana Senechal confronts a culture that has come to depend on instant updates and communication at the expense of solitude. Schools today emphasize rapid group work and fragmented activity, not the thoughtful study of complex subjects. The Internet offers contact with others throughout the day and night; we lose the ability to be apart, even in our minds. Yet solitude plays an essential role in literature, education, democracy, relationships, and matters of conscience. Throughout its analyses and argument, the book calls not for drastic changes but for a subtle shift: an attitude that honors solitude without descending into dogma"--Provided by publisher.

Habits such as regular exercise are well known to be linked to better health in older adults. Far less is understood about behaviors that contribute to the optimally aging mind. This may be a reason why only about 25% of elders meet the standards for optimal cognitive aging. The Aging Intellect describes more than a dozen specific characteristics that distinguish older people who remain cognitively vigorous from the majority who are aging normally or are at risk for cognitive impairment. In addition, this book provides professionals with evidence-based recommendations that can help their aging patients and clients minimize the effects of predictable cognitive changes and more fully use their mental abilities. The Aging Intellect is also written for people of all ages interested in maximizing their cognitive vigor. Dr. Powell has encouraging words for those who know they are not aging optimally, but are willing to modify one or two habits that can improve their mental powers. Richly illustrated with clinical examples and case studies, The Aging Intellect includes topics rarely discussed in book form. specifies lifestyle habits and attitudes linked to three levels of cognitive aging: optimal, normal, and at risk for cognitive impairment describes evidence based strategies that minimize mental decline warns of normal cognitive changes that increase the chances of elders making poor financial decisions identifies intellectual qualities that strengthen with age.