Half Way Revolution

"Halfway to Revolution" is a cultural portrait of possibly the most important American literary epoch, that of the years between 1865 and 1945, focusing on the work and lives of three of its central personalities - Henry Adams, William James and Gertrude Stein. The featured writers are treated as representative of certain bodies of knowledge and critical thinking about that knowledge - history, science, and literature - within which can be detected the deep changes and crises of form and content which characterize "modern thought". The major development Bush traces is derived from Hannah Arendt: the shift from "politics" to "society" as the key critical concept through which the world of artists and thinkers may be undrestood in this period. Adams in regard to history, James in regard to science, and Stein in regard to literature is each shown in conflict and confrontation with their respective disciplines, pushing against ethical and epistemological frontiers. In this book Bush links changes in thinking to a "real" history of social, economic and political life, incorporating biography and socio-political analysis.