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Everyone knew Abigail was different.Instead of keeping quiet, she blurted out questions. Instead of settling down with a wealthy minister, she married a poor country lawyer named John Adams. Instead of running from the Revolutionary War, she managed a farm and fed hungry soldiers. Instead of leaving the governing to men, she insisted they "Remember the Ladies." Instead of fearing Europe's kings and queens, she boldly crossed the sea to represent her new country. And when John become President of the United States, Abigail became First Lady and served as John's powerful adviser.Leave it to Abigail-an extraordinary woman who surprised the world.

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No family in three generations has contributed so much to American history as the Adamses. John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Charles Francis Adams, despite periods of doubt, knew that history, if not their contemporaries, would recognize their accomplishments. When the Adams Papers series is complete, the writings of these three statesmen will have been examined thoroughly.Aside from the Legal Papers of John Adams, published in 1965, these two volumes are the first in Series III: General Correspondence and Other Papers of the Adams Statesmen. Volumes 1 and 2 of the Papers of John Adams include letters to and from friends and colleagues, reports of committees on which he served, his polemical writings, published and unpublished, and state papers to which he made a contribution.All of Adams’s newspaper writings, including “A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law,” are in these two volumes. In addition to being a condemnation of the Stamp Act, the “Dissertation” is shown to be one of the building blocks of the theory of a commonwealth of independent states under the king, which reaches complete statement in the Novanglus letters. For the first time, all thirteen of these letters appear in full with annotation.The period September 1755 to April 1775 covers Adams’s public service in Braintree and Boston town meetings, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the First Continental Congress, and the First Provincial Congress of Massachusetts. During this time his political future was being shaped by circumstances not always of his choosing. He hesitated at first at the threshold of a public career, political ambition in conflict with concern for his family’s well-being. But as the confrontation with Great Britain sharpened, the crisis became acute; no choice remained. For Adams there was no shirking the path of duty.

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These volumes document John Adams’s thinking and actions during the final years of his congressional service and take him through his first five months as a Commissioner in France in association with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee.While Adams was still in Philadelphia, military matters continued to he his major concern. Most demanding was his presidency of the Board of War, which took up his “whole Time, every Morning and Evening.” In general, though, the documents and reports of his conduct reveal a commitment to a national outlook. Congress should be a national legislature, and personal, state, and regional rivalries should give way to concern for the greater good—these were his deeply held convictions.When chosen a Commissioner to France, Adams was reluctant to go. But duty and the honor of the position, along with the encouragement of an understanding and self-sacrificing wife, persuaded him to accept. With son John Quincy for a companion, he crossed the Atlantic to a new career. His initiation into the complexities of diplomacy brought a growing awareness of European affairs and the problems facing the new nation in the diplomatic arena. Letters deal with such varied topics as the supervision of American commercial agents in French ports, regulation of privateers, settlement of disputes between crews and officers, negotiation of loans, and help for American prisoners in England. Personal letters run the gamut from Adams’s views on the proper conduct of American diplomacy to strangers’ pleas for aid in locating relatives in America. Contrary to the usual impression of Adams as little more than a clerk for the Commission, evidence shows that he was its chief administrator.Acclimation to living abroad among diplomats did not stifle Adams’s yearning for the simplicities of private life in the midst of his family. Yet as the important and interesting documents of this volume show, the groundwork was being laid for his even more significant role in diplomacy.

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As the American colonies grew more restive, and a break with the mother country ceased to be unthinkable, John Adams was forced to spend less and less time with his beloved family. Although burdened by ever-expanding responsibilities in the Second Continental Congress, he found time for an amazing amount of correspondence. The majority of his letters were written to secure the facts that would enable this duty-ridden man to decide and act effectively on the issues being debated. Military affairs, a source of never-ending concern, provide some of the most fascinating subjects, including several accounts of the Battle of Bunker Hill, assessments of various high-ranking officers, and complaints about the behavior of the riflemen sent from three states southward to aid the Massachusetts troops.The heated question of pay for soldiers and officers strained relations between New England and southern colonies early. By refusing to confront the issue of slavery when it was raised by several correspondents, Adams sought to avoid exacerbating regional sensitivities further. When the question of independent governments for former colonies arose, at the request of several colleagues Adams sketched a model, Thoughts on Government, three versions of which are included here.His optimistic republicanism, however, was balanced by fear that a “Spirit of Commerce” would undermine the virtue requisite for republican institutions. Adams' important committee work included his draft in 1775 of rules for regulation of the Continental Navy, which have remained the basis for the governance of the United States Navy down into our own time, and his plan of treaties, which would guide American diplomats up to World War II. Both were derivative, but he skillfully adapted his materials to American needs and circumstances. These volumes reflect the spirit of those tumultuous years when the leaders emerging in America confronted each other, and exciting new ideas, as they tried to resolve the issues of a revolutionary period.

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On the last day of December 1780, John Adams wrote that he had just spent “the most anxious and mortifying Year of my whole Life.” He had resided first at Paris, then at Amsterdam, attempting, without success, to open Anglo–American peace negotiations and to raise a Dutch loan. In volumes 9 and 10 of the Papers of John Adams, over 600 letters and documents that Adams sent to and received from numerous correspondents in Europe and America provide an unparalleled view of Adams’s diplomacy and a wealth of detail on the world in which he lived.These volumes chronicle Adams’s efforts to convince the British people and their leaders that Britain’s economic survival demanded an immediate peace; his “snarling growling” debate with the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, over the proper Franco–American relationship; and his struggle to obtain a loan in the Netherlands, where policies were dictated by Mammon rather than republican virtue. Adams’s writings, diplomatic dispatches, and personal correspondence all make clear the scope of his intelligence gathering and his propaganda efforts in the British, French, and Dutch press. The letters reflect his interest in Bordeaux wines, the fate of Massachusetts Constitution that he had drafted in 1779, and political developments in Philadelphia, Boston, London, and St. Petersburg. The volumes leave no doubt as to John Adams’s unwavering commitment to the American cause. Even in this most difficult year, he believed the revolution in America to be “the greatest that ever took Place among Men.” He felt honored to serve a new nation where “the Wisdom and not the Man is attended to,” whose citizens were fighting a “People’s War” from which the United States would inevitably emerge victorious to take its rightful place on the world stage.

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Long before "the one percent" became a protest slogan, American founding father John Adams feared the power of a class he called simply "the few"--the wellborn, the beautiful, and especially the rich. In John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy, Luke Mayville presents the first extended exploration of Adams's preoccupation with a problem that has a renewed urgency today: the way in which inequality threatens to corrode democracy and empower a small elite. By revisiting Adams's political writings, Mayville draws out the statesman's fears about the danger of oligarchy in America and his unique understanding of the political power of wealth--a surprising and largely forgotten theory that promises to illuminate today's debates about inequality and its political consequences. Adams believed that wealth is politically powerful in modern societies not merely because money buys influence, but also because citizens admire and even sympathize with the rich. He thought wealth is powerful in the same way that beauty is powerful--it distinguishes its possessor and prompts reactions of approval and veneration. Citizens vote for--and with--the rich not because, as is often said, they hope to be rich one day, but because they esteem the rich and submit to their wishes. Mayville explores Adams's theory of wealth and power in the context of his broader concern about social and economic inequality, and also examines his ideas about how oligarchy might be countered. A compelling work of intellectual history, John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy also has important lessons for today's world of increasing inequality.

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In these interviews, held in the early 1980s, with twenty-two of the major writers of the English-speaking Caribbean, Daryl Dance brings together what is much more than just a valuable source book for readers of West Indian writing. The interviews are highly readable - by turns probing, combative and reflective and always absorbing. Daryl Dance brings to the interviews a rare breadth of knowledge and empathy with the work of the writers interviewed and the openly avowed insights of an African-American woman.The writers interviewed include Michael Anthony, Louise Bennett, Jan Carew, Martin Carter and Denis Williams, Austin Clarke, Wilson Harris, John Hearne, C.L.R. James, Ismith Khan, George Lamming, Earl Lovelace, Tony McNeill, Pam Mordecai and Velma Pollard, Mervyn Morris, Orlando Patterson, Vic Reid, Dennis Scott, Sam Selvon, Michael Thelwell, Derek Walcott and Sylvia Wynter. This second edition contains updated bibliographies for all the writers.Daryl Dance is Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.

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John Quincy Adams is widely recognized as America’s most distinguished diplomat, taking into account the length and breadth of his public service and his influence on American foreign policy. In the course of this remarkable journey, John Quincy documented his ideas and actions through his writings, speeches, letters, diary entries, and state papers. To aid those interested specifically in learning more about the man and his views on foreign policy, the editors have compiled a collection of the most important and often-cited works, such as his famous July 4, 1821 Oration: “she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”The selections in this volume provide insights into Adams's diplomatic practices and the critical issues that marked the young American nation. To give the readers context, the editors have provided introductions for both particular periods in John Quincy's life as well as individual documents. Wherever possible, the editors have included the full text but, given the immensity of the available material and John Quincy Adams’s style of writing, they have used discretion to abridge certain documents.

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The Adams saga takes a stride through the first half of the nineteenth century, as Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams chronicles her life with John Quincy Adams. Born in London in 1775 to a Maryland merchant and his English wife, Louisa recalls her childhood and education in England and France and her courtship with John Quincy, then U.S. minister to the Netherlands. Married in 1797, Louisa accompanied her husband on his postings to Berlin, St. Petersburg, and London. Her memoirs of Prussia and Russia vividly portray the republican couple in the courts of Europe. Louisa came to America in 1801 and would share John Quincy’s career as U.S. senator, secretary of state, president, and congressman. Except for his presidency, her diaries for these years have been preserved, and they reveal a reluctant but increasingly canny political wife. Lamentations about loss, including the deaths of three of four children, abound. But here, too, are views of Napoleonic Europe and American sectional disputes, with witty sketches of heroes and scoundrels. John Quincy emerges in a fullness seldom seen—ambitious and exacting, yet passionate, generous, and gallant. Louisa's diaries conclude with her reckoning of an eventful life, which came to a close in 1852.

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"The pleasure of reading the Education is . . . the pleasure of seeing history come alive, of seeing it move, of seeing behind history to the actions and actors. It is the pleasure of seeing revealed the humanity so often concealed in history." -Alfred Kazin Henry Adams was one of the most powerful and original minds to confront the American scene from the Civil War to World War I. Though a man of the modern world, Adams remained in temperament a child of the 18th century, his political ideals shaped by his presidential ancestors, great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John Quincy Adams. The Education of Henry Adams is both a brilliant memoir and a profound meditation on the extraordinary developments in science, politics, religion, and society that so transformed the world as he knew it. For almost thirty years, The Library of America has presented America's best and most significant writing in acclaimed hardcover editions. Now, a new series, Library of America Paperback Classics, offers attractive and affordable books that bring The Library of America's authoritative texts within easy reach of every reader. Each book features an introductory essay by one of a leading writer, as well as a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the choice and history of the text, and notes. The contents of this Paperback Classic are drawn from Henry Adams: Novels, Mont Saint Michel, The Education, volume number 14 in the Library of America series. That volume is joined in the series by two companion volumes, numbers 31 and 32, Henry Adams: History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and Henry Adams: History of the United States During the Administrations of James Madison.

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Upon publication, "Don't Panic" quickly established itself as the definitive companion to "Adams" and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". This edition comes up-to-date, covering the movie, "And Another Thing" by Eoin Colfer and the build up to the 30th anniversary of the first novel. Acclaimed author Neil Gaiman celebrates the life and work of Douglas Adams who, in a field in Innsbruck in 1971, had an idea that became "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". The radio series that started it all, the five - soon to be six - book 'trilogy', the TV series, almost-film and actual film, and everything in between.

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Scores of ghosts roam Civil War battlefields, streets, homes, and businesses in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Hear pots and pans rattle at the Klingle House as a ghostly woman prepares food on the battlefield for soldiers long dead. Meet Alice, the spirit of a little girl who appears at the Chestnut Hall Bed and Breakfast. Encounter a photogenic ghost in the basement of the historic Cashtown Inn. Learn about Jeremy's tragic death and how his mourning father still walks the halls at the Farnsworth House. Read a police officer's confession: he watched Flossy walk from the turret balcony into the Bechtel Victorian Mansion...without opening the door. Stick close as you walk the towns of Adams County; you may not be walking alone.

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To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

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Suburbanization, affordable housing, mass transportation, loss of fertile lands -- these are modern problems, yet they are not new. Thomas Adams grappled with these same concerns nearly a century ago, when he wrote Rural Planning and Development, a comprehensive overview of planning issues at the time of the First World War.Rediscovering Thomas Adams reintroduces a new generation to a text that quickly became a touchstone for planners and planning in Canada. Updated with commentaries by the country’s leading planners who hold up Adams’ text as a mirror to reflect upon contemporary planning issues, this richly illustrated book highlights Adams’ influence on the planning profession and the continued significance of his comprehensive and pragmatic vision for building better rural and urban communities.First published in 1917, Rural Planning and Development continues to resonate as a broad vision for planning, one that moves beyond the demands of the moment to offer a long-term vision for a better future.

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En el cruce de caminos de la historia, la literatura y la política de los Estados Unidos de América, la figura de Henry Adams (1838-1918) se alza sobre un horizonte de sentido que aún se corresponde con el del actual mundo de lectores. Descendiente de una ilustre familia de Nueva Inglaterra, Adams es el hilo conductor del presente ensayo, que propone un recorrido a través de la escritura como poder no constituido de la joven república, desde los conceptos fundamentales de la literatura y el puritanismo americanos, hasta sus implicaciones en el desarrollo de una filosofía de los derechos humanos, de la que Lincoln sería su exponente agónico, y en el debate sobre los modelos de interpretación de la Constitución americana. Bajo la amenaza de subsumir los estímulos culturales en la crítica del imperialismo, La experiencia política americana supone un hito en la elaboración de una respuesta a la pregunta por el significado de América como civilización.

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Passed by the House of Representatives at the start of the 1836 session, the gag rule rejected all petitions against slavery, effectively forbidding Congress from addressing the antislavery issue until it was rescinded in late 1844. In the Senate, a similar rule lasted until 1850. Strongly supported by all southern and some northern Democratic congressmen, the gag rule became a proxy defense of slavery's morality and economic value in the face of growing pro-abolition sentiment. In John Quincy Adams and the Gag Rule, 1835-1850, Peter Charles Hoffer transports readers to Washington, DC, in the period before the Civil War to contextualize the heated debates surrounding the rule. At first, Hoffer explains, only a few members of Congress objected to the rule. These antislavery representatives argued strongly for the reception and reading of incoming abolitionist petitions. When they encountered an almost uniformly hostile audience, however, John Quincy Adams took a different tack. He saw the effort to gag the petitioners as a violation of their constitutional rights. Adams's campaign to lift the gag rule, joined each year by more and more northern members of Congress, revealed how the slavery issue promoted a virulent sectionalism and ultimately played a part in southern secession and the Civil War. A lively narrative intended for history classrooms and anyone interested in abolitionism, slavery, Congress, and the coming of the Civil War, John Quincy Adams and the Gag Rule, 1835-1850, vividly portrays the importance of the political machinations and debates that colored the age.

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Throughout their 54-year marriage, John and Abigail Adams enjoyed hearty, diverse cuisine in their native Massachusetts, as well as in New York, Philadelphia, and Europe. Raised with traditional New England palates, they feasted on cod, roast turkey, mince pie, and plum pudding. These recipes, as well as dishes from published cookbooks settlers brought from the Old World, such as roast duck, Strawberry Fool, and Whipt Syllabub, are included in this historical cookbook. Join John, who wrote his wife about dinners with upper-class families in Philadelphia while serving in the Second Continental Congress, and Abigail, the loyal and generous hostess who crossed the Atlantic to join the first American Ambassador to Great Britain, on this culinary journey. Together or separate, at home or abroad, this extraordinary couple humbly experienced an international style of cookery that inspired modern American culinary culture. Now, while attempting these 56 recipes, read about and toast their contributions to democracy.

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An unprecedented and eye-opening examination of the early career of one of America’s most celebrated photographers One of the most influential photographers of his generation, Ansel Adams (1902–1984) is famous for his dramatic photographs of the American West. Although many of Adams’s images are now iconic, his early work has remained largely unknown. In this first monograph dedicated to the beginnings of Adams’s career, Rebecca A. Senf argues that these early photographs are crucial to understanding Adams’s artistic development and offer new insights into many aspects of the artist’s mature oeuvre. Drawing on copious archival research, Senf traces the first three decades of Adams’s photographic practice—beginning with an amateur album made during his childhood and culminating with his Guggenheim-supported National Parks photography of the 1940s. Highlighting the artist’s persistence in forging a career path and his remarkable ability to learn from experience as he sharpened his image-making skills, this beautifully illustrated volume also looks at the significance of the artist’s environmentalism, including his involvement with the Sierra Club.Published in association with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona

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Written by self-described "theatre junkies" for those who love to read novels about the theatre, A Novel Approach to Theatre contains over 600 entries describing novels that have theatrical settings or in which characters work in the theatre. Excluded from the work are novels which inspired plays, and those titles set exclusively in the world of ballet, opera or film. A finding tool that is itself highly readable and fun, its entries are arranged under one of the following categories: bio-novels, classics, fantasy, historical novels, mystery, romance, westerns, and young adult. Extensive cross-references assist the reader in finding the primary entry for the novel. For ease in locating copies of the books, the authors have included ISBNs for all titles published after 1969 and format references for those interested in books on tape, film or video. Indexes identify novels by author, title and subject.

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Sherlock Holmes faces H.G. Wells’ Doctor Moreau in this thrilling fast paced romp, perfect for readers of both classic Victorian detective mysteries and science fiction alikeFollowing the trail of several corpses seemingly killed by wild animals, Holmes and Watson stumble upon the experiments of Doctor Moreau. Moreau, through vivisection and crude genetic engineering is creating animal hybrids, determined to prove the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin. In his laboratory, hidden among the opium dens of Rotherhithe, Moreau is building an army of 'beast men'. Tired of having his work ignored—or reviled—by the British scientific community, Moreau is willing to make the world pay attention using his creatures as a force to gain control of the government.A brand-new adventure for Conan Doyle's intrepid sleuth!

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“America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”—John Quincy Adams’s famous words are often quoted to justify noninterference in other nations’ affairs. Yet when he spoke them, Adams was not advocating neutrality or passivity but rather outlining a national policy that balanced democratic idealism with a pragmatic understanding of the young republic’s capabilities and limitations. America’s rise from a confederation of revolutionary colonies to a world power is often treated as inevitable, but Charles N. Edel’s provocative biography of Adams argues that he served as the central architect of a grand strategy that shaped America’s rise. Adams’s particular combination of ideas and policies made him a critical link between the founding generation and the Civil War–era nation of Lincoln.Examining Adams’s service as senator, diplomat, secretary of state, president, and congressman, Edel’s study of this extraordinary figure reveals a brilliant but stubborn man who was both visionary prophet and hard-nosed politician. Adams’s ambitions on behalf of America’s interests, combined with a shrewd understanding of how to counter the threats arrayed against them, allowed him to craft a multitiered policy to insulate the nation from European quarrels, expand U.S. territory, harness natural resources, develop domestic infrastructure, education, and commerce, and transform the United States into a model of progress and liberty respected throughout the world.While Adams did not live to see all of his strategy fulfilled, his vision shaped the nation’s agenda for decades afterward and continues to resonate as America pursues its place in the twenty-first-century world.

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William Adams (1823 - 1904) is probably best known from his locomotive designs for the London & South Western Railway. The years at Nine Elms were the culmination of career which began formally in marine engineering, including a period at sea with the Royal Sardinian Navy, encompassed civil engineering and surveying before joining the North London Railway as locomotive, carriage and wagon superintendent. He has been described as the father of the suburban train, an inventive engineer, who pioneered the use of continuous train brakes, developed well designed, free-steaming locomotive boilers for services requiring rapid acceleration and frequent stops, and his invention of a bogie with controlled side-play revolutionised future locomotive design. His next move was to the Great Eastern Railway where his designs met with mixed success, before moving south of the Thames to Nine Elms. Here, over five hundred locomotives were built to his designs, with his later express classes regarded by many as his greatest achievement. Adams also proved himself a very capable designer in developing locomotive and carriage works at all three railways, improving efficiency and reducing costs. This book tells the story of a genial man with a love of music, who was undoubtedly one of the finest late Victorian locomotive engineers.

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Technology affects almost everything we do, and its possibilities can be both exhilarating and daunting. This collection features two radio documentaries exploring Douglas Adams’ vision of the digital future, plus Did Douglas Get it Right?, presented by Mitch Benn.Douglas Adams was a passionate technology enthusiast. His bestselling The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is full of futuristic tech, and in 1990 he predicted something very like the World Wide Web in the BBC2 film Hyperland. So in 1999, he was the natural choice to present Radio 4’s The Internet: The Last 20th Century Battleground. In it, he looked at the explosion in online communication, the evolution of cyberspace, and the risks and opportunities of the new virtual world.A year later, he hosted The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Future, in which he and his guests discussed how music, publishing, broadcasting, and society in general would be transformed in the 21st century. Sadly, this was Adams’ last BBC project: his death in 2001 meant he would never see if his visions came true.However, in 2015, Mitch Benn dipped into the archives for a follow-up programme, Did Douglas Get it Right?, revisiting Adams’ predictions to discover how prescient (or otherwise) they turned out to be...Fascinating, funny and insightful, these three programmes are a wonderful tribute to Douglas Adams, and a treat for fans and futurists alike.Produced by Mark Rickards.

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Henry Adams’s letters are one of the vital chronicles of the life of the mind in America. A perceptive analyst of people, events, and ideas, Adams recorded, with brilliance and wit, sixty years of enormous change at home and abroad.Volume I shows him growing from a high-spirited but self-conscious 20-year-old to a self-assured man of the world. In Washington in the chaotic months before Lincoln’s inauguration, then in London during the war years and beyond, he serves as secretary to his statesman father and is privy to the inner workings of politics and diplomacy. English social life proves as absorbing as affairs of state.Volume II takes him from his years as a crusading journalist in Grant’s Washington, through his marriage to Clover Hooper and his pioneer work as a history professor at Harvard and editor of the North American Review, to his settling in Washington as a professional historian. There he and his wife, described by Henry James as “one of the two most interesting women in America,” establish the first intellectual salon of the capital. This halcyon period comes to a catastrophic close with Clover’s suicide.Volume III traces his gradual recovery from the shock of his wife’s death as he seeks distraction in travel—to Japan, to Cuba, and in 1891–92 to the South Seas—a recovery complicated by his falling dangerously in love with Elizabeth Cameron, beautiful young wife of a leading senator. His South Seas letters to Mrs. Cameron are the most brilliant of all.Fewer than half of Adams’s letters have been published even in part, and earlier collections have been marred by expurgations, mistranscriptions, and editorial deletions. In the six volumes of this definitive edition, readers will have access to a major document of the American past.

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'Was rich Mrs Gertrude Hullett murdered at her luxurious 15-room home on Beachy Head? Detectives are tonight trying to establish the cause of the 50-year-old widow's sudden death . . . ' Daily Mail, 1957In July 1957, the press descended in droves on the south-coast town of Eastbourne. An inquest had just been opened into the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs Bobbie Hullett. She died after months of apparent barbiturate abuse - the drugs prescribed to calm her nerves by her close friend and doctor, Dr John Bodkin Adams.The inquest brought to the surface years of whispered suspicion that had swept through the tea rooms, shops and nursing homes of the town. The doctor's alarming influence over the lives, deaths and finances of wealthy widows had not gone unnoticed - it was rumoured that the family doctor had been on a killing spree that spanned decades and involved 300 suspicious cases. Superintendent Hannam of Scotland Yard was called in to investigate.The Curious Habits of Dr Adams brilliantly brings to life the atmosphere of post-war England, and uses a wealth of new documents to follow the twists and turns of an extraordinary Scotland Yard murder enquiry. As expertly crafted as the best period detective novel, this book casts an entertainingly chilling light on a man reputed to be one of England's most prolific serial killers.

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THE NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERWhen Douglas Adams died in 2001, he left behind 60 boxes full of notebooks, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches and even poems. In 42, compiled by Douglas’s long-time collaborator Kevin Jon Davies, hundreds of these personal artefacts appear in print for the very first time.Douglas was as much a thinker as he was a writer, and his artefacts reveal how his deep fascination with technology led to ideas which were far ahead of their time: a convention speech envisioning the modern smartphone, with all the information in the world living at our fingertips; sheets of notes predicting the advent of electronic books; journal entries from his forays into home computing – it is a matter of legend that Douglas bought the very first Mac in the UK; musings on how the internet would disrupt the CD-Rom industry, among others.42 also features archival material charting Douglas’s school days through Cambridge, Footlights, collaborations with Graham Chapman, and early scribbles from the development of Doctor Who, Hitchhiker’s and Dirk Gently. Alongside details of his most celebrated works are projects that never came to fruition, including the pilot for radio programme They’ll Never Play That on the Radio and a space-inspired theme park ride.Douglas’s personal papers prove that the greatest ideas come from the fleeting thoughts that collide in our own imagination, and offer a captivating insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers and most enduring storytellers.

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Reveals how the European travels of John and Abigail Adams helped define what it meant to be an American From 1778 to 1788, the Founding Father and later President John Adams lived in Europe as a diplomat. Joined by his wife, Abigail, in 1784, the two shared rich encounters with famous heads of the European royal courts, including the ill-fated King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette, and the staid British Monarchs King George III and Queen Charlotte. In this engaging narrative, A View from Abroad takes us on the first full exploration of the Adams’s lives abroad. Jeanne E. Abrams reveals how the journeys of John and Abigail Adams not only changed the course of their intellectual, political, and cultural development—transforming the couple from provincials to sophisticated world travelers—but most importantly served to strengthen their loyalty to America. Abrams shines a new light on how the Adamses and their American contemporaries set about supplanting their British origins with a new American identity. They and their fellow Americans grappled with how to reorder their society as the new nation took its place in the international transatlantic world. After just a short time abroad, Abigail maintained that, “My Heart and Soul is more American than ever. We are a family by ourselves.” The Adamses’ quest to define what it means to be an American, and the answers they discovered in their time abroad, still resonate with us to this day.

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Reveals how the European travels of John and Abigail Adams helped define what it meant to be an American From 1778 to 1788, the Founding Father and later President John Adams lived in Europe as a diplomat. Joined by his wife, Abigail, in 1784, the two shared rich encounters with famous heads of the European royal courts, including the ill-fated King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette, and the staid British Monarchs King George III and Queen Charlotte. In this engaging narrative, A View from Abroad takes us on the first full exploration of the Adams’s lives abroad. Jeanne E. Abrams reveals how the journeys of John and Abigail Adams not only changed the course of their intellectual, political, and cultural development—transforming the couple from provincials to sophisticated world travelers—but most importantly served to strengthen their loyalty to America. Abrams shines a new light on how the Adamses and their American contemporaries set about supplanting their British origins with a new American identity. They and their fellow Americans grappled with how to reorder their society as the new nation took its place in the international transatlantic world. After just a short time abroad, Abigail maintained that, “My Heart and Soul is more American than ever. We are a family by ourselves.” The Adamses’ quest to define what it means to be an American, and the answers they discovered in their time abroad, still resonate with us to this day.

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Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fictionWhen Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and then only for an hour.But at least, as a consolation, he now knows everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will be. He knows, for instance, that his wife is going to Mars to mate with Malachi Constant, the richest man in the world. He also knows that on Titan - one of Saturn's moons - is an alien from the planet Tralfamadore, who has been waiting 200,000 years for a spare part for his grounded spacecraft . . . A finalist for the 1960 Hugo Award, The Sirens of Titan was Vonnegut's second novel. It received wide acclaim, and played with ideas of free will and predestination, themes he continued to explore in his later works. In 2015, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.-'The Sirens of Titan is marvellous. It's so funny it made me want to cry' - Infinity Plus'A classic, ripe with wit and eloquence and a cascade of inventiveness' - Brian Aldiss 'His best book . . . He dares not only to ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it' - Esquire

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