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This article examines references to the Senate of the Roman Republic in several of the early writings of Henry Adams. It looks particularly at his journalism and reform writings of the 1860s and 70s, and culminates in an analysis of his novel Democracy from 1880. Adams’ great-grandfather John was a leading proponent of a senate in the deliberations over the US Constitution. For Henry, the intellectual and political legacy represented by the Senate crystallized political problems, including the appropriate balance of power, the nature of representation, the threat of tyranny, and the dangers of party and personal corruption. Adams was closely engaged with historiographical debates in the UK and Germany over ancient republics and the lessons they held for modern ones such as USA. His portrait of the corrupt senator Silas Ratcliffe in Democracy resonates in particular with Theodore Mommsen’s treatment of Cicero. In The History of Rome, Mommsen rejected the heroic image of Cicero as the father of his country and presented instead a portrait in which the Roman senator’s self-interest predominated. At the same time, he burnished Caesar’s image as a dictator who loved the people. Mommsen’s critique of Cicero echoes through Democracy, which concludes in some despair over the prospects of the American democratic system while offering no compensatory, heroic Caesar figure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, the editor discusses several awards given to historians of early America and pays tribute to the memory of historian Frank Shuffleton. Historian Eric Slauter's book "The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution" was given an honorable mention in the 2011 MLA (Modern Language Association of America) Prize for a first book. The 2011 MLA James Russell Lowell Prize was awarded to Laura Dassow Walls for her book "The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America". Details related to the life and career of historian Frank Shuffleton are also presented, including his friendship with the editor, his role as Chair of the English Department at the University of Rochester, and and his publications.

Webster's commemorative speeches triangulate between region, nation, and the revolutionary. Atlantic world, with the nation as the central object of definition. Prior to 1830 proponents of the United States Constitution were on the offensive internationally, offering it as a model for republics throughout the Atlantic world. After 1830 those same proponents were more often on the defensive responding to a shift brought about by the dialectical emergence of Garrisonian abolitionism and intensifying Southern secessionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic media are reshaping our understanding of what texts are, how they produce meaning, and how verbal forms affect society and culture. The 2005 Wiggins Lecture examines common assumptions about the history of verbal technologies and offers new ways of thinking about the emergent properties of textual media. Contrasting the printed medium with the allegedly static forms of oral performance and manuscript, media histories often focus on print as an emerging technology and an agent of social change. An alternative to print-driven media history, considers how theories of technology and history are bound up with the ways that we talk about textual forms and suggests a perspective that better accounts for the complex evolution of verbal culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviewed: Early American Writings. Mulford, Carla, ed.

Reviewed: The Literatures of Colonial America: An Anthology. Castillo, Susan and Schweitzer, Ivy, ed.