Public Man Research Articles

Anton Vladimirovich Kartashev as a Prophet not in His Own Country

This article discusses the justification by Anton Kartashev, a Russian emigrant historian, theologian, and public figure for the ideal of Holy Rus’, which was supposed to serve as a religious basis for the creation of the cultural and historical identity of the representatives of the “second wave” of emigration from the Soviet Union during the Second World War. In the case study, the author of the article applies methods of “personal history” and “new intellectual history” to both historical works and such ego documents as letters published and stored in the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European Culture at Columbia University. Considering the genesis of the concept of Holy Rus’ in the publications of Karashev before the war, the author of the article shows the influence on the content of the political views of the public man who followed the principles of centrism, intransigence, and non-precondition. Along with this, the article reveals the links between the historical and cultural, canonical and dogmatic justifications of the ideal in his narratives which were constructed as the Hegelian triad: thesis – antithesis – synthesis. Kartashev represented the process of transformation of the emerging symphony of church and state in Ancient Rus’ and Muscovite State through its denial in the laic culture of the Russian Empire after the Petrine reforms into a new desired symphony of church and society. The central place in the article is occupied by the characteristics of changes among Russian émigrés at the end and after the Second World War and by the explanation of the impact of these changes on the motivation of Kartashev to present his vision of the ideal of Holy Rus’ in a form of a book. As a result of studying the long process of preparing the edition and the subsequent reviewing and discussion of the book, it is shown that this ideal was perceived ambiguously. Such perception of Kartashev’s book was influenced by the complication of ideological divisions among Russian emigrants as a result of the spread among the part of them of the mood of “Soviet patriotism” and the addition to their ranks of anti-Soviet-minded “displaced persons” from the Soviet Union, as well as differences in the vision of life prospects by the representatives of the “older” generations of refugees who had to leave Soviet Russia soon after the revolution and the “younger” one, who were entering into life abroad. As a result, most of the participants in the discussion of the book, speaking kindly about the author, nevertheless emphasized their disagreement with both the political and religious-dogmatic justifications of the ideal of Holy Rus’ as a basis for their cultural and historical identity.

Women’s Lives in a Spanish-Texas Community: San Antonio de Béxar, 1718–1821

Women’s Lives in a Spanish-Texas Community: San Antonio de Béxar, 1718–1821 Jesús F. de la Teja (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Béxar’s women enjoyed a full social life and, under certain circumstances, a public economic life as well. The woman at the center of scene might well be operating a cantina in her home—note the crosses, toys, and household items hanging on the walls—while the young woman on the right, possibly a family member or criada (servant, but literally “raised” or “brought up”) helps with the seemingly perpetual task of making tortillas, while the woman at the lower left holds a child in her arms. General Research Division, The New York Public Library. “Trajes mexicanos, un Fandango = Costumes mexicains = Mexican dresses.” New York Public Library Digital Collections, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-16b9-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 [Accessed Aug. 24, 2022]. [End Page 332] Jane Long is not the mother of Texas, although that is how she was identified at least by the 1870s, and that is how she has been depicted in Texas history books for over a century.1 Former U.S. senator Kay Bailey Hutchison repeated this sobriquet in her book, Unflinching Courage: Pioneering Women Who Shaped Texas, which does not include a single Tejana2 or American Indian female. One look at Hutchison’s bibliography tells the story; it does not even list Teresa Palomo Acosta and Ruthe Winegarten’s Las Tejanas: 300 Years of History, published by the University of Texas Press in 2003. Hutchison’s myopia is neither new nor surprising. She represents a vision of what it means to be Texan and sends a very particular message (although one with fewer and fewer adherents all the time): that Jane Long could be the mother of Texas because only Anglo [End Page 333] women are really Texan. While most historians in the academy long ago abandoned this myopic perspective, it remains entrenched in the state’s popular history.3 But history is also driven by the record, and traditional use of the archival record has not been kind to borderlands women generally and Indigenous and Hispanic4 women specifically. Records have been most plentiful about the actions of public men doing public things. Records of statecraft, business, and religion are dominated by the presence of men, who since the time that history became a formal part of the academy have also been its principal writers. Men are also much more abundant in government and legal records, so when historians have looked at social and cultural themes, they have been conditioned to see men first. With the professionalization of history in the nineteenth century and men dominating the academy, historical research and writing became a principally male endeavor, and women and their actions and roles, already poorly represented in many types of records, fell by the wayside. This male-dominated landscape has undergone a substantial transformation in the last half-century, particularly with regard to more recent history, but the farther back in time one looks, the more difficult it becomes to center women in historical narratives.5 Spanish Texas is a particularly good example of how unkind the historical record can be to women’s history, although the situation extends throughout the borderlands. Few local records (where women would be most likely to be found) survive for the province’s first capital, Nuestra Señora de los Adaes, now a historical site in western Louisiana. As Francis [End Page 334] Galán points out, “The women of Los Adaes evidently did not leave behind any wills during the fort’s existence.”6 Likewise, there is almost a complete dearth of local records for La Bahía del Espíritu Santo, now Goliad, and for Nacogdoches. For those places the bulk of the surviving documentation addresses government and military matters and the activities of missionaries. Only San Antonio of the original Spanish Texas communities has a fairly extensive set of local sacramental, legal, and administrative records from which colonial-era gender issues can be identified and analyzed.7 As Donald Chipman and Harriett Denise Joseph note in their one chapter...

Staging Depth: Eugene O’Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse

Staging Depth: Eugene O’Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Beverly Taylor (bio) The latest volume of The Brownings' Correspondence (Wedgestone, 2022) is once again the greatest boon of the year to Browning scholarship. The delay of volume 28, covering correspondence from both Brownings in the period spanning May 1860–February 1861, caused by a change in printers, kept students of the poets' works perpetually wanting more. Now it is here, and this volume does not disappoint. Superbly edited by Philip Kelley, Edward Hagen, and Linda M. Lewis, it provides authoritative texts, crucial and expert annotations, and in three very useful appendices, biographical sketches of correspondents not previously identified in the series (in this volume, William Cornwallis Cartwright, the Brownings' neighbor in Rome), quotations of relevant passages from supporting documents, and contemporary reviews of the Brownings' works published during the period covered (in this instance, EBB's Poems before Congress and Aurora Leigh). This volume ends with a unique contribution, representing forty-three images from EBB's "own" personal carte-de-visite album, which she purposefully collected after RB gave her the album in October 1860. RB's 1878 notation on the front flyleaf of the album assures viewers that all the photos were chosen and arranged by EBB herself. These include many participants in the complex events of the Risorgimento, most of them Italian patriots, military and political leaders, and supporters of the movement (including Napoleon III, Camile de Cavour, and Garibaldi)—what she called "the public men mixed up with the Italian question" (p. 202), though she also included Pio Nono (Pope Pius IX), whom she viewed as an impediment to unification. She wrote that these photographs were "the most deeply interesting of possible sights," insofar as "souls are seen in faces" (p. 202). A couple of the photographs seem to document personal friendships rather than roles in [End Page 348] the Risorgimento (such as Walter Savage Landor, who had come under RB's guardianship, and Seymour Kirkup, an English artist and art historian residing in Florence), and a couple of the images from cartes-de-visite have been lost (those of the opera composers Verdi and Rossini). EBB's focus on the Italian movement toward unification and independence as a nation-state occupies many of the letters in this volume, most of them concerned with attitudes toward Louis Napoleon, now the French Emperor Napoleon III: Was he a hero who risked much by daring to champion Italy militarily against Austrian forces? Or was he an untrustworthy ally, who merely feigned sincere support in order to grab Italian territory to aggrandize France? In numerous letters, EBB reports that she has been vilified for supporting Napoleon III: at one point, she remarks that in England, where her "A Curse for a Nation" was hotly deplored, "they pay me a good deal . . . with mud and eggshells" (p. 195). A couple of unusually long letters to EBB reveal critical friends attempting to argue with her belief that Napoleon III merited praise and trust. On 3 September 1860, her old acquaintance Robert Bulwer Lytton (Owen Meredith) wrote that while Louis Napoleon's ends were not necessarily "selfish," his means were "unscrupulous" (p. 129). Later the same month, Frederick Tennyson (Alfred's brother, who became a friend of the Brownings in Florence) wrote EBB a less reasoned and persuasive letter to argue that Louis Napoleon's name represented 666, the mark of the beast (a creation of the devil), in three ancient languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (p. 168). Despite her resistance to complaints that she betrayed her Englishness by supporting Italy so passionately, and happy to be popular in America, she nevertheless remarked, "anti-English as I am said to be, I prefer an English audience very much" (p. 217). The other major focus of EBB's correspondence in this year is her grief over the suffering of her sister Henrietta with uterine cancer. Longing to help nurse her beloved sister, she both praises her other sister, Arabella, for caring for Henrietta and also expresses distress that Arabella is on-site to care for the patient while EBB is separated by great distance. Even as she acknowledges that Arabella and RB are correct in judging that the cold of...

Becoming others

By revisiting Gilles Deleuze's notion of the virtual, this work examines what the virtual world means for our identity and intimacy. We sketch three effects of the virtual world: 1) the complete disintegration of public-private boundary; 2) the emerging performativity of virtual identities; 3) the destabilization of our ontology. From public life to multiplayer online role-playing games, we show the changing meaning of play in various contexts: performing, acting, and becoming. Following Richard Sennett's dramaturgical perspective of the public Man, we see people proactively perform the image to construct the real-world identity. Then in the video games, players choose a virtual identity to act in the game world, transforming it into a liminal space where continued identity transitions become possible. We analyze several cases, including Otherkin and Otaku subculture, to argue that virtual identity and community can bring ontological indeterminacy and propose a program that coexists with otherness.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychological distress and biological rhythm in China's general population: A path analysis model.

When facing major emergency public accidents, men and women may react differently. Our research aimed to assess the influence of gender difference on social support, information preference, biological rhythm, psychological distress, and the possible interaction among these factors during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this cross-sectional study, 3,237 respondents aged 12 years and older finished the online survey. Levels of social support, information preference, biological rhythm, and psychological distress were assessed using validated scales. A path analysis was conducted to explore possible associations among these variables. The path analysis indicated that women with high levels of social support had a lower possibility of biological rhythm disorders and lower levels of somatization symptoms of psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. The influence of social support on somatization symptoms was exerted via biological rhythm. Women tended to believe both negative and positive information, while men preferred more extreme information. Our results highlighted gender difference in study variables during the COVID-19 pandemic and the importance of social support in alleviating psychological distress and biological rhythm disorders. Moreover, we confirmed that information preference differed significantly by somatization symptoms of psychological distress, suggesting extra efforts to provide more individualized epidemic information. Longitudinal research is required to further explore casual inferences.

MORE THAN A HOUSE: A GENDER ANALYSIS OF LAHSA’S THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT (VAWA) HOUSING POLICY

Homelessness is a chronic problem worldwide, including in the United States. The country’s biggest homeless population occupies major cities like New York and Los Angeles. The fight against homelessness in L.A. has been going on for years, with the homeless population flooding places like Venice Beach, Echo Park, Hollywood, and its most famous homeless encampment, Skid Row. One of the groups constantly vulnerable to the threat of homelessness are women, and the intersection between women's homelessness and domestic violence remains to be a challenging subject. Enriching previous scholarship, this paper critically analyzes housing programs targeting female domestic violence survivors in Los Angeles. In order to get an in-depth examination, the focus is directed to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Housing Policy managed by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). The paper employs gender theory to examine the program’s shortcomings. Using Jeff Hearn’s conception of the ‘public men,’ this paper proposes that the program’s limitations stem from the prevailing patriarchy, which cultivates from home and extends to public policy through the domination of men. Furthermore, the policy is insufficient in combatting women's homelessness due to the absence of programs such as trauma centers, financial security & education program, and childcare unit that are vital to address the unique experience of domestic violence survivors. Thus, evaluation of the housing policy is immediately needed to overcome the problem of homelessness due to domestic violence.

Epidemics Eroding Public Life: An Analysis on the Covid-19 Pandemic

Epidemics have several impacts on different dimensions of the social structure. First of all, epidemics bring people to change many routines in their daily life and to rearrange their lives. Discussing the impact of epidemics on social life in the context of COVID-19 will allow us to understand that this process, which seems only a medical process, actually has many social effects. This study focuses on the Covid-19 pandemic as an inducement of the rising individuality of modern man under the light of Sennett’s affirmation regarding the fall of public man. To this end, changes in consumption of goods and spaces, medicalization of daily life, the effect of the experience of lockdown during the pandemic on the self and consequently the disruption of the interaction order were analyzed. During the pandemic, the issue of individuals' retreat into their own private sphere and the growth of private life and private sphere asymmetrically in the face of public sphere and public life were addressed. As a result, the lockdowns experienced during the pandemic negatively affected the social self and the interaction order, accelerating the collapse of the public man which is a process that has been going on for a long time.

A FUGAZ VISITA DE JORGE LUIS BORGES A MEDELLÍN EM 1965

Jorge Luis Borges, um dos escritores latino-americanos mais universais, esteve em Medellín em 1965, um ano após ter sido forte candidato ao Prêmio Nobel de Literatura, e fez parte do intercâmbio cultural entre Colômbia e Argentina, cujos governos retornaram, com medo e incertezas, ao regime democrático, após vários anos de ditadura. Foi um périplo do escritor argentino como homem público, que em poucos dias visitou quatro cidades colombianas. Sua passagem por Medellín foi rápida, mas conseguiu convidar os medellinenses a fazer parte de seu círculo de leitores e admiradores. Este artigo reconstitui as atividades realizadas por Borges na capital do departamento de Antioquia, no marco de um cenário definido por circunstâncias políticas, culturais e diplomáticas.

Una prospettiva storiografica: l’Italia repubblicana, la rappresentanza, le rappresentazioni di genere (1945-1968)

La storiografia ha esaminato con originalità e da diverse prospettive il suffragio e la rappresentanza ma ulteriori approfondimenti possono giungere dallo studio dei significati che l’«universo semiotico» della politica attribuisce alle differenze di genere nello spazio pubblico. Sulla base di una ricerca sulle fonti a stampa e d’archivio, il saggio esamina le pratiche discorsive sull’«uomo pubblico» e sulla «donna pubblica» nei primi vent’anni dell’Italia repubblicana. Al fine di mettere in evidenza le tante eredità del passato sulla politica italiana, offre alcuni spunti sulle rappresentazioni della femminista di primo Novecento e sulla «sovversiva» negli anni del regime fascista.

DJAMAL KAMAL - AN EXPERIENCED TRANSL AL - AN EXPERIENCED TRANSLATOR

The article is dedicated to the brief biography of Jamal Kamal, the great poet of Uzbekistan, skilled translator and publicist, a public man, a literary critic, and the candidate of philological sciences. Along with his creative activity, the author translated the finest pieces of world literature into the Uzbek language. It is also an ancient tradition to translate samples of Persian literature into Turkic or, conversely, Turkic works of art into Persian. Taking into account all above said, Jamal Kamal was one of the first in Uzbekistan to translate the work of Jaloliddin Rumi “Masnaviy Manaviy” into Uzbek. In order to confirm our opinion, the original Uzbek translations have been studied comparatively.

ГЛОБАЛЬНЫЙ ЭКОЛОГ: К 90-ЛЕТИЮ СО ДНЯ РОЖДЕНИЯ АКАДЕМИКА Ю.А. ИЗРАЭЛЯ

On May, 15 it would have been 90 years of Yuri Antonovich Izrael (15.05.1930-23.01.2014). He was an outstanding scientist, world-renowned specialist in geophysics, ecology and climatology, talented science organizer, great statesman and public fi brilliant teacher and remarkable man, head of the Soviet Hydrometeorological Service, chief editor of «Metrology and hydrology» magazine, vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), coordinator for IPCC questions in Russia, founder and director of the Yu. A. Izrael Institute of Global Climate and Ecology, president of the Russian Academy of Ecology, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Yu. A. Israel’s creative path and scientific contribution to the investigation of global nature processes, particularly climate changes and ability of their regulation are considered.

Stability of the Liberal Order, Moral Learning, and Constitutional Choice: An Unresolved Tension in Buchanan’s Political Economy

Buchanan mentions at several points in his oeuvre the necessary role for a ‘constitutional attitude’ – at the individual (‘the private man’) and social level (‘the public man’). Buchanan’s constitutional attitude is both explanatory and evaluative; it explains why citizens value liberty but also highlights one of the necessary conditions for the stability of a free society. We argue that Buchanan’s idea of a ‘constitutional attitude’ is extremely relevant, though underdeveloped. First, it remains an open question what exactly a constitutional attitude means in practice and, consequently, it is unclear what kind of institutions would foster it. Second, and more fundamentally, we believe that the success of his constitutional political economy project depends on some account of moral learning. Although Buchanan stresses the individual aspect of the process of self-constitution, he doesn’t take sufficient account of how the institutional environment and our social relationships structure this process. We discuss to what extent a broadly neo-Aristotelian account of moral learning can provide a more robust foundation for Buchanan’s ideas. We discuss supporting empirical evidence from behavioral economics and derive some normative implications regarding the institutional contexts that would foster a constitutional attitude.

Celso Furtado, intelectual reformista a serviço da (n)ação

Celso Furtado (1920-2004) é um dos economistas e cientistas sociais latino-americanos mais influentes de todo o século XX. Já há algum tempo passou à categoria de clássico, sendo considerado um autor indispensável para compreender o Brasil e para pensar a problemática do desenvolvimento-subdesenvolvimento. Sua vasta e profícua obra, forjada ao longo de seis décadas, compreende quase quatro dezenas de livros, mais de uma centena de ensaios e artigos acadêmicos, além de folhetos, prefácios, apresentações, resenhas, entrevistas, conferências, relatórios e planos. Assim, no momento em que se comemora o centenário do nascimento deste economista político brasileiro, faz-se necessário retomar e refletir sua trajetória intelectual e política, reunindo os elementos que permitem retratá-lo como teórico independente, intelectual reformista e homem público voltado à ação e a serviço da nação. Este é exatamente o propósito deste artigo. Para alcançá-lo, recorreu-se às memórias intelectuais do autor, às entrevistas que ele concedeu a várias personalidades e aos trabalhos de inúmeros intérpretes que escreveram sobre a vida e a obra de Celso Furtado. A pesquisa permitiu concluir que a trajetória intelectual de Celso Furtado traduz o sentido que ele sempre atribuiu ao exercício da atividade intelectual, a saber, uma luta frequente em prol da (re)construção social e econômica da nação.

A quase ausência do português em Romances e novelas de Joaquim Norberto Sousa Silva: estratégia ou acaso?

Remarkable figure in the nineteenth century’s Brazilian literary and cultural scene, Joaquim Norberto incarnated the romantic spirit and was a model of the public man of his time, consciously cooperating in the construction of the nation and the building of a new society. Thus, in Romances and novels, the Portuguese character almost doesn’t exist. Its presence in «The two orphans» and «The false testament» is strategic or casual, serving merely to justify and affirm the Brazilian nationality, or to denigrate it.

From Pasolini to Moro: Notes on two unburied corpses and Italian cinema

This text sets out to present the cinematic representation of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Aldo Moro from the idea of the “unburied corpse”. I propose here that, due to the circumstances of their deaths, the lifeless bodies of the filmmaker and the politician do not endorse their public identity but rather overflow and unfold it. Their corpses configured an identity of ordinary man that replaced the image of the public man in the Italian collective imagination and contended to the public character the space of representation. The text recovers some proposals of The Moro Affair (L’affaire Moro, Leonardo Sciascia, 1978) to reconstruct the links between these two protagonists of the intellectual and political life of the Years of Lead. I also analyze the way in which Italian cinema has attempted to interpret the split figures of Moro and Pasolini and their unburied corpses.

Professor Dr. Lyubomir Dinev (1911-1986) – a prominent scientist and public man, one of the reformators in Bulgarian geography

Professor Dr. Lubomir Antonov Dinev is undoubtedly- among the most notable geographers in Bulgaria and is a scientist with European fame. The proposed article is dedicated to his life, creativity and public affairs. Getting acquainted with his biography, scientific work, practical elaborations, and his social activity is not only an expression of tribute to him, but it is also important for younger generations of geographers to learn more about this remarkable Bulgarian scientist and researcher.

Prevalence and associated factors for dipstick microscopic hematuria in men

BackgroundMicroscopic hematuria is a common incidental finding on routine urinalysis. Although there are no clear recommendations to perform routine urinalysis, some studies have shown that up to 50% of general practitioners continue to perform annual routine urinalysis regardless of age or risk factors. The aim of this study was to identify associated factors and prevalence of dipstick microscopic hematuria in the general male population presenting to an annual public men’s health fair.MethodWe conducted a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data at an annual Men’s Health fair from 2008 to 2013. Patient reported health questionnaires, basic physical exam including digital rectal exam, basic bloodwork and dipstick urinalysis data was examined.ResultsA total of 979 patients were reviewed. Of these, 850 provided a urine sample and were included in the final analysis. Seventy-three (8.6%) patients had positive hematuria on urinalysis. Average age in both groups was 55 years. Presence of microscopic hematuria was correlated with presence of diabetes and proteinuria with odds-ratio of 2.8 (1.3–5.8) and 2.9 (1.7–5.0) respectively on multivariate analysis. There was no significant correlation identified with age, hypertension, coronary artery disease, body-mass index, smoking, prostate specific antigen (PSA) or International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS). Limitation of this study is the lack of follow-up and knowledge of subsequent investigations of patients.ConclusionMicroscopic hematuria is a prevalent condition in the male population presenting to a health fair. The only factors associated with microscopic hematuria were diabetes and proteinuria. No association was found between hematuria and smoking, age, or lower urinary tract symptoms.

Archivos de conocimiento y la cultura legal de la publicidad en la Marsella medieval

Este artículo, basado en un estudio de casos de Marsella en el siglo XIV, argumenta que la publicidad fue, incluso en el mundo de la baja Edad Media cuando parecen dominar las normas escritas del Derecho Romano, una metáfora fundamental de la cultura legal medieval. Al comportarse de una forma abierta y pública, hombres y mujeres conseguían inscribir información de hechos legales básicos, tales como edad, parentesco, derechos, estatus marital, y fecha de fallecimiento, en los archivos públicos de la memoria, en un período anterior al momento en que tales datos fueron sistemáticamente registrados por escrito en los archivos. La naturaleza abierta y ceremonial de tal comportamiento validaba y otorgaba autoridad a la información creada de ese modo. Debido a esto, en casos judiciales los litigantes intentaban mostrar no sólo que ciertos hechos favorecían su posición, sino también que los mismos eran de «voz y conocimiento público». Para hacerlo, frecuentemente reclutaban testigos de un espectro social amplio, y la composición del grupo de testigos servía para ilustrar la amplitud lograda por esos actos. Según este argumento, el cambio más profundo en la cultura legal europea no tuvo lugar con la transformación del derecho oral y consuetudinario al derecho escrito, sino con una transformación posterior, la de los archivos de conocimiento públicos y facilmente accesibles, a los cada vez más privados y de control estatal de la época moderna.

The Strange Career of Ulysses S. Grant

The Strange Career of Ulysses S. Grant Owen Wister (bio) OWEN WISTER (1860–1938) is now best known as the author of The Virginian, a novel published in 1902 and one of the founding documents in the enduring and endlessly evolving conception of the American frontier in general and the western hero in particular. The grandson of Fanny Kemble, one of the most celebrated actresses of the nineteenth century, he was born in Philadelphia, educated in boarding schools in Europe and the United States, and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1882. His early ambitions centered on music (Franz Liszt heard him play and confirmed his achievements), but he returned to Philadelphia to undertake a career in business at the same time as he pursued a series of writing projects. The strain produced by these conflicting imperatives likely resulted in a nervous breakdown, and in 1885 he traveled to Wyoming—the first of many such trips to that region—in hopes of restoring his health. After securing a degree from the Harvard Law School, he committed himself to a life as a writer of western fiction, publishing a sequence of stories and novels on this theme over the decade from 1891 to 1902. Two years before the appearance of The Virginian, an enormously successful book that would continue to hold the attention of readers for generations, Wister published a brief biography of Ulysses S. Grant in the series of Beacon Biographies of Eminent Americans edited by Mark De Wolfe Howe. In later years there were some comparable works: The Seven Ages of Washington came out in 1907 and Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship, which traced his association with Theodore Roosevelt back to their years together at Harvard, appeared in 1930. Over the course of the last three decades of his life, Wister's work moved in different directions—he brought out a novel of social manners, Lady Baltimore (1906), reminiscent of Henry James, who was a friend of his mother's, as well as a variety of political writings; but he was drawn again and again to the western, which— however uneasy he might have been about the literary confinement associated with that genre—seemed to offer him a necessary imaginative home. As for General and later President Ulysses S. Grant, his complex career, alternating between personal failure and public success, has continued to haunt the minds of readers and writers ever since the publication of his Memoirs, one of the greatest works of American autobiography ever written. F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night is only one of the works that reflects its deep and lasting impact and the vexing nature of Grant's ambiguous example. This excerpt from Owen Wister's short life of Grant is taken from his Ulysses S. Grant in the Beacon series, published in 1900 by Small, Maynard & Company in Boston. —SD [End Page 197] None of our public men have a story so strange as this. It is stranger than Lincoln's. It is very much the strangest of them all. ________ Is it accident that at the beginning of a certain four years this middle-aged man should be nobody, and at the end should be the one commander out of all to win and retain the supreme confidence of his government and his people? It has been called accident by some grown-up writers. His own words give the unconscious explanation: "I feel as sure of taking Richmond as I do of dying." Not McClellan, not Meade, not Lincoln himself, not any one at all, had ever been able to feel as sure as that. This utter certainty of the Union's success burned in Grant like a central fire, and, with all his limitations, made his will a great natural force which gravitated simply and irresistibly to its end. Lincoln, beginning to feel it from afar, answered the grave complaints that rose after the carnage of Shiloh: "I can't spare this man: he fights." And presently, during the impatient days of Vicksburg failures, he insists: "I rather like the man. I think we'll try him a little longer." Finally comes the renowned remark...