Susan Nagel's books include Marie-Therese, Child of Terror: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter; Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin; and The Influences of the Novels of Jean Giraudoux on the Hispanic Vanguard Novels of the 1920s-1930s.Late last month I asked her what she reading. Her reply:
I am currently reading The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz. This book is the second in a series that began with The Rise of American Democracy: The Curse of the New Order. Is Princeton professor WilentzLearn more about Susan Nagel and her work at her blog and at her Marie Antoinette's Daughter blog.America’s Edward Gibbon? I’d rather not be around for the ‘Fall,’ but I am looking forward to The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 to be published in May, 2008.
In The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, Wilentz proves a true political scientist, building his argument with Newtonian physics and Hegelian dialectics. Partisan politics, despite the Founding Fathers’ fears of them, have been the oxygenating force that hurled a primordial experiment (democracy or republic?) from one BIG BANG toward empire as an evolving system of compromise guided its trajectory. Wilentz offers brilliantly illuminated microscopic focus.
The Page 99 Test: Mistress of the Elgin Marbles.
--Marshal Zeringue
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