Pagina principaleGruppiConversazioniAltroStatistiche
Cerca nel Sito
Questo sito utilizza i cookies per fornire i nostri servizi, per migliorare le prestazioni, per analisi, e (per gli utenti che accedono senza fare login) per la pubblicità. Usando LibraryThing confermi di aver letto e capito le nostre condizioni di servizio e la politica sulla privacy. Il tuo uso del sito e dei servizi è soggetto a tali politiche e condizioni.

Risultati da Google Ricerca Libri

Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.

Sto caricando le informazioni...

The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian (2007)

di Heather Ewing

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiCitazioni
1875144,451 (3)4
In 1836 the United States government received a strange and unprecedented gift - a bequest of 104,960 gold sovereigns (then worth half a million dollars) to establish a foundation in Washington 'for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men'. The Smithsonian Institution, as it would eventually be called, grew into the largest museum and research complex in the world. Yet it owes its existence to an Englishman who never set foot in the United States, and who has remained a shadowy figure for more than a hundred and fifty years. Smithson lived a restless life in the capitals of Europe during the turbulent years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; at one time he was trailed by the French secret police, and later languished as a prisoner of war in Denmark for four long years. Yet despite a certain a penchant for gambling and fine living, he had, by the time of his death in Paris in 1829, amassed a financial fortune and a wealth of scientific papers that he left to the new democracy America. Spurned by his natural father and his country, he would be acknowledged for his own achievements in the New World. Drawing on unpublished diaries and letters from archives all over Europe and the United States, Heather Ewing tells the full and compelling story for the first time, revelling a life lived at the heart of the English Enlightenment and illuminating the mind that sparked the creation of America's greatest museum.… (altro)
Aggiunto di recente daAKHamlet, willard5991, AccompanyingBooks, Omega2280, MW12345, coldspur, TheCollegium, alexham31
Biblioteche di personaggi celebriRuth Bader Ginsburg
Nessuno
Sto caricando le informazioni...

Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro.

Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro.

» Vedi le 4 citazioni

Mostra 5 di 5
It's a bit slow going but some interesting information.
  ELockett | Sep 26, 2022 |
A thorough and fascinating biography of Smithson, whose story is much more intriguing and complicated than I knew. Well worth a read. ( )
  JBD1 | Jun 15, 2019 |
On June 27, 1829, a rather obscure Englishman died in Genoa. He carried with him a receipt for a will stipulating that the bulk of his fortune — something like £100,000 (around $50,000,000 today) — should be employed by the United States for "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

James Smithson wrote the will himself and omitted the lawyerly language that might have made his bequest clearer. A chemist by training who published a number of narrowly focused scientific papers measuring the amount and action of minerals in various substances, and active in London's Royal Society for the Advancement of Science, Smithson may have intended a museum of natural history — or perhaps a laboratory or school. No one knew.

And why America? Early on, Smithson expressed sympathy for the revolutionary cause, but as the illegitimate son of the Duke of Northumberland, Smithson seemed as much a royalist as a democrat, adopting after his mother's death the name of Smithson (it had been Macie, his mother's first husband's name) as if to reassert his aristocratic prerogatives.

The man was a mystery. South Carolina senator John Calhoun, always suspicious of centralized power, opposed a national museum, especially one endowed by a virtually anonymous Englishman. Accepting Smithson's bequest was "beneath the dignity" of America. John Quincy Adams, on the other hand, still aggrieved over his failure to establish a national university, led the forces that eventually prevailed in establishing an institution that describes itself as "America's national education facility with 19 museums, 9 research centers, and over 140 affiliate museums around the world"—not to mention its display of Charles Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis" and Dorothy's ruby slippers.

But the Smithson mystery deepened in 1865, when a fire in the newly established Smithsonian Institution destroyed his papers. Heather Ewing begins her new biography, "The Lost World of James Smithson," by making it seem that Smithson's story has irrevocably vanished, which of course makes her heroic efforts to recover a sense of Smithson from public documents and from the diaries and letters of his friends all the more laudable.

Ms. Ewing has turned up valuable new material, bringing to light her subject's "lost world," but whenever his own words and papers are missing, the diligent biographer heads for quaint, entertaining tidbits — such as this description of John Graham's "Temple of Health and Hymen," an institution capitalizing on the public's "newfound curiosity for electrical experiments and their ageold interest in sex":

Visitors willing to pay an exorbitant fee could allegedly cure their infertility with a night in the massive "Celestial Bed," in which silk sheets performed "in oriental manner" atop mattresses stuffed with the "most springy hair, produced at vast expense from the tails of English stallions." The bed's domed canopy, supported by forty pillars of colored glass, contained a series of artificial lodestones or magnets, providing the participants with "the exhilarating force of electrical fire."

Remember, these were prehistoric days before you could hook yourself up to a car battery.

This is all very jolly, but in the end Ms. Ewing has to resort to the bane of all biographers: the "must have been." She does not know much about what Smithson really thought, but she is sure about what "must have been." The results of all her probablys and likelys are tenuous, if suggestive.

In "The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams, and The Making of America's Greatest Museum: The Smithsonian" (2003), Nina Burleigh has written a tauter, more penetrating biography. Instead of trying to stretch her data, Ms. Burleigh asks pointed questions. Why didn't Smithson marry? Why didn't he give his money to the Royal Society? Because, Ms. Ewing answers, he had a falling out with his colleagues. But then why not another august British institution, Ms. Burleigh asks. Her questions, it seems to me, are more instructive than Ms. Ewing's nugatory speculations.

Smithson's motivations remain a puzzle, though Ms. Burleigh has a final surmise of her own that strikes home. Northumberland never publicly acknowledged his illegitimate son, and Smithson knew that if he did not "specify a contingent use for his money and his nephew died, the estate would revert to the government of England." Whatever else America was, it was a new world, one where Smithson's name could be recognized in its own right rather than absorbed into England's treasury.

Ms. Ewing makes a similar point, that Smithson's life was all about seeking "identity, prestige, and progress," but her narrative is tricked out with too many suppositions that make its arrival at that fundamental point a rather tedious affair. ( )
  carl.rollyson | Sep 3, 2012 |
Questa recensione è stata scritta per gli Omaggi dei Membri di LibraryThing .
A most interesting book on the life of James Smithson. Smithson's bequest would go on to fund the founding of the Smithsonian institution. Sadly, Smithson's papers were lost in a fire, leaving little material to shed light on his life. However, through painstaking research in archives around the world and amoung the papers, letters and journals of Smithson's friends, family and associates, Ewing has been able to research and shed light on Smithsn's life and activities. The book is well written and provides a glimpse into the life of this most interesting and previously little-known, under-appreciated man and the environment in which he lived. ( )
  papyri | Dec 12, 2010 |
Ironically enough, the Smithsonian, that great preserver of just about anything, lost almost all the papers and effects of its founder in a fire. Heather Ewing has embarked upon the noble goal of bringing to life this founder of so much that is very American, who never actually saw the country, only hoped for it. And the gift was a near thing--Smithson's first heir was his nephew and his descendants--but there were no descendants, and so Smithson's name lives on, as he hoped, in the magnificent collection of museums and research offices and lectures. Without Smithson's voluminous pre-fire papers, the trail is tough one, but Ewing has searched archives of all sorts, throughout Europe, to try to bring together anything that she can find about Smithson, and the effort has been fruitful. Smithson is also important as a type--one of the learned gentlemen of the Enlightenment who performed many of the small and necessary tasks of exploring the natural world, but who have been forgotten, blotted out by the geniuses who pulled their work together into great insights. The book is quite readable, lavishly illustrated and heavily documented. Should interest all Americans, and people interested in the Enlightenment. ( )
1 vota PuddinTame | Dec 28, 2008 |
Mostra 5 di 5
nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Devi effettuare l'accesso per contribuire alle Informazioni generali.
Per maggiori spiegazioni, vedi la pagina di aiuto delle informazioni generali.
Titolo canonico
Titolo originale
Titoli alternativi
Data della prima edizione
Personaggi
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Luoghi significativi
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Eventi significativi
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Film correlati
Epigrafe
Dedica
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
For Chico
and
in the memory of Gene R. White
in token of gratitude
Incipit
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
The morning of January 24, 1865, dawned bitterly cold in Washington.
Citazioni
Ultime parole
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
(Click per vedere. Attenzione: può contenere anticipazioni.)
Nota di disambiguazione
Redattore editoriale
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Elogi
Lingua originale
DDC/MDS Canonico
LCC canonico

Risorse esterne che parlano di questo libro

Wikipedia in inglese

Nessuno

In 1836 the United States government received a strange and unprecedented gift - a bequest of 104,960 gold sovereigns (then worth half a million dollars) to establish a foundation in Washington 'for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men'. The Smithsonian Institution, as it would eventually be called, grew into the largest museum and research complex in the world. Yet it owes its existence to an Englishman who never set foot in the United States, and who has remained a shadowy figure for more than a hundred and fifty years. Smithson lived a restless life in the capitals of Europe during the turbulent years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; at one time he was trailed by the French secret police, and later languished as a prisoner of war in Denmark for four long years. Yet despite a certain a penchant for gambling and fine living, he had, by the time of his death in Paris in 1829, amassed a financial fortune and a wealth of scientific papers that he left to the new democracy America. Spurned by his natural father and his country, he would be acknowledged for his own achievements in the New World. Drawing on unpublished diaries and letters from archives all over Europe and the United States, Heather Ewing tells the full and compelling story for the first time, revelling a life lived at the heart of the English Enlightenment and illuminating the mind that sparked the creation of America's greatest museum.

Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche

Descrizione del libro
Riassunto haiku

Discussioni correnti

Nessuno

Copertine popolari

Link rapidi

Voto

Media: (3)
0.5
1 1
1.5
2 3
2.5 1
3 7
3.5 1
4 3
4.5
5 1

Sei tu?

Diventa un autore di LibraryThing.

 

A proposito di | Contatto | LibraryThing.com | Privacy/Condizioni d'uso | Guida/FAQ | Blog | Negozio | APIs | TinyCat | Biblioteche di personaggi celebri | Recensori in anteprima | Informazioni generali | 203,222,642 libri! | Barra superiore: Sempre visibile