UNITED STATES AUTHOR · BIOGRAPHY · PRESIDENTS
Ida Minerva Tarbell
Also known as: Ida M. Tarbel, Ida M. Tarbell
An American teacher, author and journalist. She was one of the leading "muckrakers" of the progressive era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is thought to have pioneered investigative journalism (Wikipedia).
At the beginning of the twentieth century there is, strictly speaking, no frontier to the United States.
— from The life of Abraham Lincoln
Most acclaimed
Father Abraham
Lincoln is the single most compelling figure in our history, but also one of the most enigmatic. Was he the Great Emancipator, a man of deep convictions who ended slavery in the United States, or simply a reluctant politician compelled by the force of events to free the slaves? In Father Abraham , Richard Striner offers a fresh portrait of Lincoln, one that helps us make sense of his many contradictions. Striner shows first that, if you examine the speeches that Lincoln made in the 1850s, you will have no doubt of his passion to end slavery. These speeches illuminate the anger, vehemence, and sheer brilliance of candidate Lincoln, who worked up crowds with charismatic fervor as he gathered a national following. But if he felt so passionately about abolition, why did he wait so long to release the Emancipation Proclamation? As Striner points out, politics is the art of the possible, and Lincoln was a consummate politician, a shrewd manipulator who cloaked his visionary ethics in the more pragmatic garb of the coalition-builder. He was at bottom a Machiavellian prince for a democratic age. When secession began, Lincoln used the battle cry of saving the Union to build a power base, one that would eventually break the slave-holding states forever. Striner argues that Lincoln was a rare man indeed: a fervent idealist and a crafty politician with a remarkable gift for strategy. It was the harmonious blend of these two qualities, Striner concludes, that made Lincoln's role in ending slavery so fundamental. Father Abraham challenges recent portraits of Lincoln as an essentially passive politician and reluctant abolitionist.
The history of the Standard Oil Company
À l'aube du XXe siècle, une ressource d'un genre nouveau, tapie dans les entrailles de la terre, déchaîne tous les appétits : c'est l'or noir. Aux États-Unis, cœur battant de la révolution industrielle, des milliers de barils du précieux liquide sont écoulés chaque jour – et la demande ne fait que croître. Mais à force de manœuvres, une entreprise, la Standard Oil Company, est parvenue à faire main basse sur la quasi-totalité de son commerce, et abuse de ce monopole pour imposer à tous la loi de ses seuls profits. Rien ne semble pouvoir arrêter son expansion ni l'influence de son fondateur, John D. Rockefeller... Une femme va cependant se dresser contre cet ogre économique : Ida Tarbell, considérée comme l'une des pionnières du journalisme d'investigation moderne. Entre 1902 et 1904, elle publie dans une revue indépendante, le McClure's Magazine, une série d'articles révélant les pratiques déloyales, sinon illicites, employées par la Standard Oil pour neutraliser ses rivales. Son enquête choc provoquera une déflagration dans l'opinion publique qui conduira la justice américaine, en 1911, à reconnaître l'entreprise coupable de violation du droit de la concurrence et à ordonner son démantèlement. C'en sera fini du plus grand trust de l'histoire des États-Unis. Ici traduit en français pour la première fois, le livre de Tarbell est un monument de la littérature américaine qui brasse tous les éléments de sa mythologie – une plongée dans l'enfance terrible du capitalisme, lorsque tout était encore permis.
The life of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln "was a tall, spare man, with large bones, and towering up to six feet and four inches. He leaned forward, and stooped as he walked...There was no grace in his movements, but an expression of awkwardness, combined with force and vigor. By nature he was diffident, and when in crowds, not speaking and conscious of being observed, he seemed to shrink with bashfulness...His forehead was broad and high, his hair was rather stiff and coarse, and nearly black, his eye-brows heavy, his eyes dark grey, clear, very expressive, and varying with every mood, now sparkling with humor and fun, then flashing with wit; stern with indignation at wrong and injustice, then kind and genial, and then again dreamy and melancholy.". Isaac N. Arnold's word picture owes everything to personal observation because he knew Abraham Lincoln well for a quarter of a century. Eventually an adviser to the sixteenth president, Arnold attended his inaugurations, heard his great speeches, visited him at the White House, and on a spring day in 1865 joined the procession that carried his slain body there. Twenty years later he published this biography, giving a detailed sense of Lincoln the entertaining storyteller, the shrewd politician, the steadfast visionary. Here is the story of Lincoln's rise from humble origins to the presidency, backgrounded by events leading inexorably to the Civil War. Boyhood in Kentucky and Illinois, legal and legislative experiences, marriage to Mary Todd, name-making debates with Stephen Douglas, struggles as president to end slavery and shore up the union, conduct of Northern forces as commander-in-chief, murder at Ford's Theater - all fuel the narrative drive of The Life of Abraham Lincoln.