Susan Dunn
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Susan Dunn is Professor of French Literature and the History of Ideas at Williams College. She is author of Nerval et le roman historique (Minard).
The public beheading of Louis XVI was a unique and troubling event that scarred French collective memory for two centuries. To Jacobins, the king's decapitation was the people's coronation. To royalists, it was deicide. Nineteenth-century historians considered it an alarming miscalculation, a symbol...
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What the two great modern revolutions can teach us about democracy today.
In 1790, the American diplomat and politician Governor Morris compared the French and American Revolutions, saying that the French "have taken Genius instead of Reason for their guide, adopted Experiment instead of Experience, and wander in the Dark because they prefer Lightning to Light." Although both revolutions professed similar Enlightenment ideals of freedom, equality,...
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A history of the 1940 U.S. presidential election, when bitterly divided Americans debated the fate of the nation and the world.
In 1940, against the explosive backdrop of the Nazi onslaught in Europe, two farsighted candidates for the U.S. presidency-Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, running for an unprecedented third term, and talented Republican businessman Wendell Willkie-found themselves on the defensive against American isolationists and their...
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One hundred days that set the stage for the American Century.During Franklin Roosevelt's "First Hundred Days" in 1933, he dealt with a devastating economic crisis; during the summer of 1935, the period historians call his "Second Hundred Days," he signed transformational social legislation. Less well-known are the hundred days following his reelection in November 1940, to an unprecedented third term in the White House, when he faced a worldwide military...
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Examines the lives of American leaders Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, looking at how they emerged from lives of privilege to become the instigators of progressive change in the United States, and considering their impact on the political and moral landscape of the country.
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Leading scholars define the special contributions and qualifications of our first president. Washington's legacy is a successful experiment in collective leadership, great initiatives in establishing a strong executive branch and the formulation of innovative and lasting economic and foreign policies. Along with highlighting these accomplishments, the authors also trace Washington's later dissatisfaction with public life and the seeds of dissent and...