Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Historian Gross (The Minutemen and Their World) provides a rich and immersive portrait of 19th-century Concord, Mass., and the Transcendentalist movement that originated there. Aiming to place Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other Transcendentalists "in the context of the town in which they lived and wrote," Gross documents the "promises and pitfalls" of Thoreau's pencil-making father, John Thoreau, and other businessmen due to the region's expanding economy ("Trade curses every thing it handles," Thoreau would later write in Walden). Gross also delves into the subscription libraries, debating societies, and lecture series that connected community members to the wider world, and details how Emerson's "call for self-reliance" was a bridge too far for many would-be Transcendentalists in Concord who still believed in the "ancient social ethic of New England." Thoreau, however, was "drawn apart from his townsmen" and toward Emerson, as the two men "struggled for ways to reconcile the new freedom of individuals with the older claims of interdependence for the common good." Seamlessly integrating a wealth of primary and secondary sources into his narrative, Gross brings 19th-century New England to vivid life and portrays the personal dynamics between Transcendentalism's leading figures with insight. This sweeping study brilliantly illuminates a crucial period in American history. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Award-winning historian Gross (emeritus, Univ. of Connecticut; The Minutemen and Their World) looks at the small but not closed world of Concord, Massachusetts, and asks: why did the cultural ideal of individualism come to the front there in the 1830s? And what form did it take? He proposes that in Boston, spurred by reformers like Orestes Brownson and George Ripley, the Transcendentalist ideal of self-culture was linked directly to radical social reform (abolitionism, women's rights), but for Concord's Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, the path to improvement was through individual reflection, one soul at a time, not won in concerted social reform. Emerson and Thoreau loom large in this study, but the bulk of the book is about Concord, as a prequel to how Transcendentalism emerged there and the form it took. What were the young people of Concord looking for, and failing to find, in the communitarian dicta of their parents? How did the lectures and writings of Emerson resonate with them, and why? While studying these questions, Gross also explores the roles of Concord women in the phenomenon of individualism. VERDICT This lively social and cultural history should reward most readers interested in this critical period of American history.--David Keymer, Cleveland
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The history of a flourishing 19th-century village that gave rise to transformative thought. Conceived as a sequel of sorts to Gross' acclaimed The Minutemen and Their World (1976), this book is a deeply researched inquiry into the idea of individualism as expressed and grappled with by the two most famous transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau, among many others in 19th-century New England. Drawing on prodigious scholarly and archival sources, Gross creates a vibrant portrait of Concord, Massachusetts, as a thriving village that, from the 1820s to the 1840s, confronted evolving intellectual, economic, social, political, and spiritual pressures as well as contentious issues that drove townspeople "into mutually suspicious enclaves," frayed bonds of community, and undermined an "ideology of interdependence" inherited from the Puritans. In the 1820s and '30s, Concord prospered, with factories producing cloth from cotton picked by Southern slaves; a pencil factory, owned by Thoreau's family; a circulating library, debating club, and lyceum; bustling shops; and, notably, the exclusive, influential Social Circle, "a self-selecting club of the local elite," open only by nomination (Emerson proudly joined in 1839). Gross' large, colorful cast of characters includes conflicting religious leaders, such as Congregationalist Ezra Ripley and Calvinist Lyman Beecher; African American artisans, Irish immigrants, and local farmers; and reform-minded women who energetically took up the cause of abolition, to which Emerson--unlike Thoreau--came late. Thoreau, Gross writes, "captured the driving forces of the day," including the invasive "iron horse" (Emerson, unlike Thoreau, was an early supporter of the railroad and bought railroad stock), modern communications, the need for better schools, and "the moral and spiritual failures of church and state, the problematic programs of the reformers, and the loss of wildness in nature." Gross incisively examines Emerson's "masculine version of individualism," which was offensive to his wife; Thoreau's apparent retreat from social life; and both men's changing conception of the individual within a matrix of social obligations and sustaining community. A vigorous, compelling American history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
