The Saintly Scoundrel

The Saintly Scoundrel PDF Author: Andrew F. Smith
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252022821
Category : Ex-church members
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first biography of one of this nation's most outrageous individuals, a man who was president of the medical departments of two universities and chancellor of two others, a member and officer of at least twenty different agricultural, medical, or social organizations, an itinerant minister in three different denominations, and a lobbyist who successfully ushered bills through legislatures in Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois. Bennett's roles ranged from mayor of Nauvoo, confidant of Joseph Smith, and chicken breeder to surgeon, quartermaster general of Illinois, promoter of the tomato, and diploma salesman. His story is brilliantly told by an author who spent nine years uncovering and piecing together the facts. The Saintly Scoundrel reveals Bennett as one of the nineteenth century's most enterprising and entertaining humbugs, truly a man who excelled at promoting beliefs, places, things, and himself, whose ability to abruptly shift positions on people and faiths would dazzle even the most formidable propagandist of the twentieth century.

The Saintly Scoundrel

The Saintly Scoundrel PDF Author: Andrew F. Smith
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252022821
Category : Ex-church members
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first biography of one of this nation's most outrageous individuals, a man who was president of the medical departments of two universities and chancellor of two others, a member and officer of at least twenty different agricultural, medical, or social organizations, an itinerant minister in three different denominations, and a lobbyist who successfully ushered bills through legislatures in Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois. Bennett's roles ranged from mayor of Nauvoo, confidant of Joseph Smith, and chicken breeder to surgeon, quartermaster general of Illinois, promoter of the tomato, and diploma salesman. His story is brilliantly told by an author who spent nine years uncovering and piecing together the facts. The Saintly Scoundrel reveals Bennett as one of the nineteenth century's most enterprising and entertaining humbugs, truly a man who excelled at promoting beliefs, places, things, and himself, whose ability to abruptly shift positions on people and faiths would dazzle even the most formidable propagandist of the twentieth century.

In Sacred Loneliness

In Sacred Loneliness PDF Author: Todd Compton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 830

Get Book Here

Book Description
Beginning in the 1830s, at least thirty-three women married Joseph Smith. These were passionate relationships which had some longevity, except in instances in which Smith's first wife, Emma, learned of the secret union and quashed it. Emma remained a steadfast opponent of polygamy throughout her life.

Rescuing the World

Rescuing the World PDF Author: Andrew F. Smith
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791488543
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
Leo Cherne's life brimmed with paradox and improbability. He was born in the Bronx to a poor, immigrant, Jewish family, and yet rose to the heights of economic and political power in WASP America. A successful entrepreneur and an unofficial advisor to nine presidents, he nevertheless devoted the majority of his time to humanitarian causes, particularly the International Rescue Committee, which he chaired for forty years. From Hungary to Cuba to Cambodia, Cherne traveled across the globe on behalf of political refugees. A consummate networker, he also had the uncanny ability to attract and cultivate talented people before they became prominent, including such figures as John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Patrick Moynihan, Claiborne Pell, Tom Dooley, William Casey, John Whitehead, and Henry A. Kissinger. He was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984 by Ronald Reagan, who proclaimed that although never elected to governmental office, Leo Cherne had more influence on American foreign policy than most elected officials. The underlying theme of his life was that one person, without family contacts or wealthy connections, could make a difference worldwide in political and humanitarian affairs.

The Tomato in America

The Tomato in America PDF Author: Andrew F. Smith
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252070099
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the Americas to Australasia, from northern Europe to southern Africa, the tomato tickles the world's taste buds. Americans along devour more than twelve million tons annually of this peculiar fruit, variously considered poisonous, curative, and aphrodisiacal. In this first concerted study of the tomato in America, Andrew F. Smith separates myth from historical fact, beginning with the Salem, New Jersey, man who, in 1820, allegedly attracted spectators from hundreds of miles to watch him eat a tomato on the courthouse steps (the legend says they expected to see him die a painful death). Later, hucksters such as Dr. John Cook Bennett and the Amazing Archibald Miles peddled the tomato's purported medicinal benefits. The competition was so fierce that the Tomato Pill War broke out in 1838. The Tomato in America traces the early cultivation of the tomato, its infiltration of American cooking practices, the early manufacture of preserved tomatoes and ketchup (soon hailed as "the national condiment of the United States"), and the "great tomato mania" of the 1820s and 1830s. The book also includes tomato recipes from the pre-Civil War period, covering everything from sauces, soups, and main dishes to desserts and sweets. Now available for the first time in paperback, The Tomato in America provides a piquant and entertaining look at a versatile and storied figure in culinary history.

Cervantes

Cervantes PDF Author: Jean Canavaggio
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393028126
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Get Book Here

Book Description
Renowned Cervantes scholar Canavaggio (U. of Caen, France) won the Prix Goncourt for biography in 1987 with the original French edition of this speculative inquiry into the life of the great Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. Translated from the French by J.R. Jones. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Saints vs. Scoundrels

Saints vs. Scoundrels PDF Author: Dr. Benjamin Wiker
Publisher: EWTN Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1682780287
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Saints vs. Scoundrels Dr. Benjamin Wiker invites you to interact not just with the ideas that have shaped history, but with the people who created and spread those ideas. In this collection of lively and imaginative conversations between the great truth-tellers and the great error-peddlers of history, you will come to appreciate the personalities behind the “Great Conversation” that has shaped western civilization. Jean-Jacques Rousseau vs. St. Augustine. Machiavelli vs. St. Francis. Ayn Rand vs. Flannery O’Connor. These people may have never met in real life, but the ideas they represent and the movements they started have interacted throughout history and shaped our present. And so how fascinating would it be if they had ever shared a living room? This is the question Dr. Wiker answers with deep research and dynamic storytelling. Enjoy this unique opportunity to join the conversation!

In Heaven as It Is on Earth

In Heaven as It Is on Earth PDF Author: Samuel Morris Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199912920
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Get Book Here

Book Description
A compelling new interpretation of early Mormonism, Samuel Brown's In Heaven as It Is On Earth views this religion through the lens of founder Joseph Smith's profound preoccupation with the specter of death. Revisiting historical documents and scripture from this novel perspective, Brown offers new insight into the origin and meaning of some of Mormonism's earliest beliefs and practices. The world of early Mormonism was besieged by death--infant mortality, violence, and disease were rampant. A prolonged battle with typhoid fever, punctuated by painful surgeries including a threatened leg amputation, and the sudden loss of his beloved brother Alvin cast a long shadow over Smith's own life. Smith embraced and was deeply influenced by the culture of "holy dying"--with its emphasis on deathbed salvation, melodramatic bereavement, and belief in the Providential nature of untimely death--that sought to cope with the widespread mortality of the period. Seen in this light, Smith's treasure quest, search for Native origins, distinctive approach to scripture, and belief in a post-mortal community all acquire new meaning, as do early Mormonism's Masonic-sounding temple rites and novel family system. Taken together, the varied themes of early Mormonism can be interpreted as a campaign to extinguish death forever. By focusing on Mormon conceptions of death, Brown recasts the story of first-generation Mormonism, showing a religious movement and its founder at once vibrant and fragile, intrepid and unsettled, human and otherworldly. A lively narrative history, In Heaven as It Is on Earth illuminates not only the foundational beliefs of early Mormonism but also the larger issues of family and death in American religious history.

Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, Volume 1: History

Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, Volume 1: History PDF Author: Brian C. Hales
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 638

Get Book Here

Book Description
Few American religious figures have stirred more passion among adherents and antagonists than Joseph Smith. Born in 1805 and silenced thirty-nine years later by assassins’ bullets, he dictated more than one-hundred revelations, published books of new scripture, built a temple, organized several new cities, and became the proclaimed prophet to tens of thousands during his abbreviated life. Among his many novel teachings and practices, none is more controversial than plural marriage, a restoration of the Old Testament practice that he accepted as part of his divinely appointed mission. Joseph Smith taught his polygamy doctrines only in secret and dictated a revelation in July 1843 authorizing its practice (now LDS D&C 132) that was never published during his lifetime. Although rumors and exposés multiplied, it was not until 1852 that Mormons in Brigham Young’s Utah took a public stand. By then, thousands of Mormons were engaged in the practice that was seen as essential to salvation. Victorian America saw plural marriage as immoral and Joseph Smith as acting on libido. However, the private writings of Nauvoo participants and other polygamy insiders tell another, more complex and nuanced story. Many of these accounts have never been published. Others have been printed sporadically in unrelated publications. Drawing on every known historical account, whether by supporters or opponents, Volumes 1 and 2 take a fresh look at the chronology and development of Mormon polygamy, including the difficult conundrums of the Fannie Alger relationship, polyandry, the “angel with a sword” accounts, Emma Smith’s poignant response, and the possibility of Joseph Smith offspring by his plural wives. Among the most intriguing are the newly available Andrew Jenson papers containing not only the often-quoted statements by surviving plural wives but also Jenson’s own private research, conducted in the late nineteenth century. Telling the story of Joseph Smith’s polygamy from the records of those who knew him best, augmented by those who observed him from a distance, may have produced the most useful view of all.

Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States

Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States PDF Author: Seth Perry
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691179131
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
Early Americans claimed that they looked to "the Bible alone" for authority, but the Bible was never, ever alone. Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States is a wide-ranging exploration of the place of the Christian Bible in America in the decades after the Revolution. Attending to both theoretical concerns about the nature of scriptures and to the precise historical circumstances of a formative period in American history, Seth Perry argues that the Bible was not a "source" of authority in early America, as is often said, but rather a site of authority: a cultural space for editors, commentators, publishers, preachers, and readers to cultivate authoritative relationships. While paying careful attention to early national bibles as material objects, Perry shows that "the Bible" is both a text and a set of relationships sustained by a universe of cultural practices and assumptions. Moreover, he demonstrates that Bible culture underwent rapid and fundamental changes in the early nineteenth century as a result of developments in technology, politics, and religious life. At the heart of the book are typical Bible readers, otherwise unknown today, and better-known figures such as Zilpha Elaw, Joseph Smith, Denmark Vesey, and Ellen White, a group that includes men and women, enslaved and free, Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Mormons, Presbyterians, and Quakers. What they shared were practices of biblical citation in writing, speech, and the performance of their daily lives. While such citation contributed to the Bible's authority, it also meant that the meaning of the Bible constantly evolved as Americans applied it to new circumstances and identities.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?

Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? PDF Author: Andrew Lawler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476729905
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
Beginning in the jungles of Southeast Asia, trekking through the Middle East, traversing the Pacific, Lawler discovers the secrets behind the chicken's transformation from a shy, wild bird into an animal of astonishing versatility, capable of serving our species' changing needs. Across the ages, it has been an all-purpose medicine, sex symbol, gambling aid, inspiration for bravery, and of course, the star of the world's most famous joke. Only recently has it become humanity's most important single source of protein. Most surprisingly, the chicken--more than the horse, cow , or dog-- has been a remarkable constant in the sperad of civilization across the globe"--Page 4 of cover