Henry Adams

Henry Adams' Building Construction was first published in 1906. It was reprinted several times and revised in 1912 with the addition of 24 pages on reinforced concrete. Beautifully illustrated with over 2,300 engravings and twelve tinted plates, it is reprinted here, unabridged, for the first time in nearly one hundred years. Adams' work sits comfortably alongside the other great construction books of the period: "Rivingtons" (also facsimiled by Donhead) and "Mitchell's". The latter two were actually slightly earlier: "Rivingtons" had already reached its fifth edition by 1906, and "Mitchell's" was in its seventh. Nevertheless Adams was hugely popular, selling over 40,000 copies in its first decade. There seems to be little doubt that its great advantage over its rivals was its format: while the others consisted of several volumes, Adams covered everything in a single one. As such it was more popular with students of building construction preparing for their exams and no doubt they kept it at their side for reference throughout their working lives. Although a great deal has changed in building technology since 1906, there is still much to learn from this volume. Of course it will be particularly useful to those who own a building of the period or who are professionals charged with looking after such buildings. But for everyone it provides an invaluable insight into the thinking of the time and an extraordinary snapshot of building in the Edwardian era. Its great benefit is its clarity.

This book, "The Life Of Albert Gallatin", by Henry Adams, is a replication of a book originally published before 1879. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible. This book was created using print-on-demand technology. Thank you for supporting classic literature.

The Education of Henry Adams, written by America’s greatest historian and heir to America’s first political family, was greeted on its posthumous release as the finest of American autobiographies. For a century it has been routinely characterized as one of world literature’s extraordinary life narratives. However, The Education isn’t truly a work of autobiography. It is a meditation on a life formed by a family tradition that wraps itself around a cultural critique of the age, and around speculations on a philosophy of history.

Chapters of Erie is a classic account of ruthless business practices in nineteenth-century America—in particular, Jay Gould and James Fisk's successful effort to gain control of the Erie Railroad in 1868 and subsequent attempt to corner the American gold market, which resulted in the "Black Friday" panic of September 24, 1869. Seizing upon the opportunity provided by the scandals to expose the links between financial malpractice on Wall Street and political favoritism and corruption, Henry Adams and his older brother Charles Francis Adams, Jr., traveled to New York and Washington to interview the participants (including Fisk), observe the Congressional hearings on the gold conspiracy, and reconstruct in forensic detail the machinations that had shaken the nation's economy. First appearing in a series of articles in the Westminster Review and the North American Review in 1870 and 1871, the results of the Adams brothers' investigative journalism were published as a book in 1886. Reissued by Cornell University Press in 1956 with a preface by Robert H. Elias, Chapters of Erie remains a well-documented, perceptive, and sometimes sardonic examination of the relationship between business and politics in America—and a warning about the dangers posed by unregulated corporations "to override and trample on law, custom, decency, and every restraint known to society, without scruple."