A Revolution in Wood celebrates the magnificent gift of sixty-six pieces of turned and carved wood to the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum by the distinguished collectors Fleur and Charles Bresler. Illustrated in lavish detail, works by this country's best-known wood artists highlight the growing sophistication of American craft's youngest medium and the expressive capacity of its most organic material. Masterpieces by the field's pioneers, including David Ellsworth, William Hunter, Mark and Melvin Lindquist, Edward Moulthrop, and Rude Osolnik, demonstrate the extraordinary range of expression achievable on the lathe, the medium's foundational tool. Compelling recent works by Ron Fleming, Michelle Holzapfel, Hugh McKay, Norm Sartorius, Mark Sfirri, and many others reveal the advent of new techniques, including multi-axis turning, the incorporation of secondary materials, and a strong focus on carving. A wide-ranging essay by Renwick Curator Nicholas R. Bell examines contemporary wood art's historical roots and its rapid growth since the 1970s. Particular attention is given to the medium's development outside the studio craft movement and how that dynamic has shaped the current field. An interview with Fleur Bresler by former Renwick Curator-in-Charge Kenneth R. Trapp offers a window on the collector's passion and highlights her twenty-five-year dedication to wood and to the artists she considers family. The final section, “Wood Art at the Renwick Gallery,” illustrates in color over two hundred works by more than one hundred artists, making this premier public collection available in print for the first time. From James Prestini's original gift of twenty pieces before the Renwick's opening to experimental works by current artists, this guide to the Smithsonian's collection will serve as a reference for years to come.

Written by one of early America's most eminent historians, this book masterfully discusses the debates over constitutionalism that took place in the Revolutionary era.

"Senior co-administrator of the Norcoast Salmon Research Facility, Dr. Mackenzie Connor - Mac to her friends and colleagues - was a biologist who had wanted nothing more out of life than to study the spawning habits of salmon. But that was before she met Brymn, the first member of the Dhryn race ever to set foot on Earth. And it was before Base was attacked, and Mac's friend and fellow scientist Dr. Emily Mamani was kidnapped by the mysterious race known as the Ro." "From that moment on everything changed for Mac, for Emily, for Brymn, for the human race, and for all the many member races of the Interspecies Union." "Now, with the alien Dhryn following an instinct-driven migratory path through the inhabited spaceways - bringing about the annihilation of sentient races who have the misfortune to lie along the star trail they are following - time is running out not only for the human race but for all life forms." "And only Mac and her disparate band of researchers - drawn from many of the races that are members of the Interspecies Union - stand any chance of solving the deadly puzzle of the Dhryn and the equally enigmatic Ro."--BOOK JACKET.

A popular concise guide - one of the clearest available on the Russian Revolution.

A concise introduction to the Russian Revolution and its origins dating back to the emancipation of the Russian peasant serfs in 1861.

In this brilliantly illuminating group portrait of the men who came to be known as the Founding Fathers, the incomparable Gordon Wood has written a book that seriously asks, "What made these men great?" and shows us, among many other things, just how much character did in fact matter. The life of each—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Paine—is presented individually as well as collectively, but the thread that binds these portraits together is the idea of character as a lived reality. They were members of the first generation in history that was self-consciously self-made men who understood that the arc of lives, as of nations, is one of moral progress.

The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. More than almost any other nation in the world, the United States began as an idea. For this reason, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood believes that the American Revolution is the most important event in our history, bar none. Since American identity is so fluid and not based on any universally shared heritage, we have had to continually return to our nation's founding to understand who we are. In The Idea of America, Wood reflects on the birth of American nationhood and explains why the revolution remains so essential. In a series of elegant and illuminating essays, Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution-from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment-and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy. As Wood reveals, while the founders hoped to create a virtuous republic of yeoman farmers and uninterested leaders, they instead gave birth to a sprawling, licentious, and materialistic popular democracy. Wood also traces the origins of American exceptionalism to this period, revealing how the revolutionary generation, despite living in a distant, sparsely populated country, believed itself to be the most enlightened people on earth. The revolution gave Americans their messianic sense of purpose-and perhaps our continued propensity to promote democracy around the world-because the founders believed their colonial rebellion had universal significance for oppressed peoples everywhere. Yet what may seem like audacity in retrospect reflected the fact that in the eighteenth century republicanism was a truly radical ideology-as radical as Marxism would be in the nineteenth-and one that indeed inspired revolutionaries the world over. Today there exists what Wood calls a terrifying gap between us and the founders, such that it requires almost an act of imagination to fully recapture their era. Because we now take our democracy for granted, it is nearly impossible for us to appreciate how deeply the founders feared their grand experiment in liberty could evolve into monarchy or dissolve into licentiousness. Gracefully written and filled with insight, The Idea of America helps us to recapture the fears and hopes of the revolutionary generation and its attempts to translate those ideals into a working democracy. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash Broadway musical Hamilton has sparked new interest in the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers. In addition to Alexander Hamilton, the production also features George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Aaron Burr, Lafayette, and many more. Look for Gordon's new book, Friends Divided.