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Benjamin Franklin, Swimmer: An Illustrated History (Transactions Vol 110, Part 1
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Against Time: Letters from Nazi Germany, 1938-1939 (Transactions 105, Part 1)
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The
story of Benjamin Franklin’s lifelong delight in swimming and his
influence in making swimming popular in the western world has never been
told. This book uses Franklin’s love of swimming to examine the
founder’s life, times, and strong, inventive personality through a lens
that historians have previously overlooked. Franklin’s personality
emerges through the lens of swimming. We see him clearly as a leader,
an inventor, and a strong, proud man. As he was in many fields, he was
self-taught. He interacted with family, friends, and acquaintances
through swimming. Swimming also offered him an entrée into British
society.
Franklin discusses swimming in his Letters and in his Autobiography. Friends
and family also comment on his swimming. Primary sources for this book
include Franklin’s writing, that of his contemporaries, and other
artistic and archaeological sources. When Franklin’s grandson Benjamin
Franklin Bache was in his care in France he swam in the Seine. Bache’s Journal constitutes
another important primary source for this book. The escapades of this
engaging literate teenager in France with his grandfather never before
have been published.
In
1968 the International Swimming Hall of Fame honored Franklin with
membership. The citation mentions his various inventions that made
swimming more efficient and his own feats as a swimmer, but most of all
his success in promoting swimming as an essential part of any education.
Benjamin Franklin’s advice about water safety and his conviction that
everyone should learn to swim because it promotes health, hygiene, and safety is still relevant. Swimming has always been “useful knowledge.”
Sarah B. Pomeroy is Distinguished
Professor of Classics and History, Emerita, at Hunter College and the
Graduate School, CUNY. She is also Lady Joan Reid Author in Residence
at Benjamin Franklin House, London, and a
Member of the American Philosophical Society. Widely recognized as a
pioneer in the fields of women’s history and classical studies, she uses
not only textual sources but also artistic and archaeological evidence
in order to reconstruct the past. Her publications include Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (1975, 1995); Women in Hellenistic Egypt from Alexander to Cleopatra (1984, 1990); Spartan Women (2002); The Murder of Regilla. a Case of Domestic Violence in Antiquity (2007); and Pythagorean Women: Their Lives and Their Writings (2013). Her most recent book is Maria Sibylla Merian, Artist, Scientist, Adventurer (2017). Her
books have been translated into Italian, Spanish, German, and Chinese.
Professor Pomeroy received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the
Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment
for the Humanities, and she is an Honorary Fellow of St. Hilda’s
College, the University of Oxford. Like Ben Franklin, she likes to play
the harpsichord and to swim.
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Johannes Höber left Nazi Germany for America in November 1938.
His
wife Elfriede was unable to leave for another year, after the outbreak of World
War II. Fifty years later, their son discovered the letters this brilliant
couple exchanged during the tumultuous months they were separated. Against
Time: Letters from Nazi Germany, 1938-1939 collects those letters with an
introduction, notes and an epilogue that set the letters in the context of
their time. Together, the letters portray the intense relationship of a
fascinating couple in a critical period in world history.
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Networks: The Creation and Circulation of Knowledge from Franklin to Facebook: Transactions, APS (Vol.111, Part 4)
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What Ever Happened to the U.S. Congress's Portraits of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette? Retracing the Events that Led to the Conflagration of the Capitol and the Loss of the Pictures on 24-25 August 1814: Tran. of the American Philosophical Society V
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Inspired by the American Philosophical Society’s digitization of Benjamin Franklin’s postal records and by its involvement in “The Cybernetics Thought CVollective I(nitiative: A History of Science and Technology POrtal Project,” this book is based on a symposium that considered the different ways that social, scientific, and intellectual networks have influenced the pursuit of “useful knowledge.” The symposium was held in Benjamin Franklin Hall in Philadelphia on June 6-7, 2019. Illus.
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One of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American political culture is what became of the United States Congress’s state portraits of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette during the British invasion of the Capitol, Washington, D.C., on the night of 24–25 August 1814. Conceived by Benjamin Franklin during a diplomatic mission, requested by the American delegates at the height of the War of Independence, and granted by the French king after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, these official full-length images of the French monarchs arrayed in ceremonial magnificence were recently identified as atelier copies after Antoine-François Callet’s Louis XVI and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s Marie-Antoinette (both 1783) and traced through Congress’s successive assembly rooms at New York City (1785), Philadelphia (1790), and Washington (1800). The fate of the royal portraits has been difficult to determine due to the incomplete documentary record and conflicting eyewitness accounts. Larkin initially takes a telescopic approach to the problem, moving from British and French production of state portraits to assert political claims in North America and despoliation of Western European countries of their art treasures, to show British and American interests at stake in the practice of looting and incendiary warfare waged across the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay prior to the destruction of the public buildings in Washington, D.C. He then pursues a microscopic approach, analyzing period documents, letters, images, and plans to test the viability of two theories—that the royal portraits were burned by British troops during their occupation of the capital or looted by American scavengers during the chaotic aftermath. While physical evidence of the portrait artifacts remains elusive, this study of the images as objects of desire, danger, and loss breaks new ground for scholars desirous of constituting an art and material history for the War of 1812.
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T. Lawrence Larkin is Professor of Seventeenth- to Nineteenth-Century European Art at Montana State University, Bozeman. He has published on aspects of early modern French and American art and culture, with a two-fold interest in the portrait patronage and mythical permutations of Queen Marie-Antoinette and the trans-Atlantic diplomatic gifts and political culture of French, British, and American governments during the Revolutionary and Imperial Eras. His books include a monograph, In Search of Marie-Antoinette: Stefan Zweig, Irving Thalberg, and Norma Shearer (Palgrave-Macmillan), and an edited volume, Politics & Portraits in the United States & France during the Age of Revolution (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press), both published in 2019.
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Biblioteca Angelica ms. 1551: The Origins of Ethnohistorical Illustration of Asia and the Americas Around 1600 in Rome: Transactions, APS (Volume 109, Part 3)
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The Tower of the Winds in Athens: Greeks, Romans, Christians, and Muslims: Two Millennia of Continual Use: Memoirs, APS (Vol. 270)
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This volume consists of three sets of watercolor drawings, each depicting non-Europea peoples or places in Asia and the Americas. The volume belonged to the famous collector and antiquarian Camillo Massino (1620-1677), and was part of a large donation to the library by his descendants in the 19th century. This is the first in-depth investigation of the three series in terms of materials or manufacture, possible relations to one another or other contemporaneous illustrations, and role in advancing understanding of the depicted peoples. Clues within the drawings, their style and content suggest not only new interpretations, but specific links between and among them, and likely origins, placing them squarely into the most intense period in the early modern era of European interest in these cultures. Illus.
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The Tower of the Winds has stood in the shadow of the Acropolis in
Athens for more than 2,100 years. This tall octagonal building, one of
the best preserved monuments from the classical period, was built by the
architect-astronomer Andronikos of Kyrrhos
as a horologion for keeping time. Almost all its features have been
attributed to the period of construction by the Greeks or renovations
made by the Romans. The building, however, was in use almost
continuously for two millennia, which includes Byzantine
and Ottoman phases. Pamela Webb, a classical archaeologist, examines
the Tower throughout its entire functional existence. A series of
appendices helps to put the Tower in broader context for the
post-classical periods. Winner of the 2016 John Frederick Lewis
Award. Illus.
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Today's Super Deal! |
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Other Presidency: Thomas Jefferson
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Our Price: $15.00 Sale Price: $10.00 You save $5.00!
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The Other Presidency: Thomas Jefferson and the American Philosophical Society, by Patrick Spero, With research assistance by Abigail Shelton and John Kenney.
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