Americana: The Americas in the World Around 1850 (Or 'Seeing the Elephant' As the Theme for an Imaginary Western) - libri usati

The Americas of the 1850s provides James Dunkerley with compelling material for this majestic and unorthodox book. Drawing on a range of contemporary sources from Walt Whitman to Darwin,Trollope, Marx and Sarmiento, Dunkerley adopts a fully Atlanticist perspective to reappraise the first steps in American modernity. Americana is arranged around major themes of time and space, culture, political economy, and international relations. Between these more general discussions are transcripts of three court cases from the period which both divert and illuminate: John Mitchel's 1848 conviction for treason in Dublin led him through Bermuda, Tasmania and Nicaragua before he joined the Confederate cause in the US Civil War. Myra Gaines' suit for the return of her legacy in New Orleans reveals her Sligo-born father to have conspired against Jefferson and treated with Napoleon's agents in the sale of Louisiana. Mariano Munoz's trial for releasing a prisoner on Good Friday in the style of Pontius Pilate draws the curtain back on Francisco Burdett O'Connor, prefect of Tarija, elder brother of the Chartist leader Feargus, and Bolivar's chief of staff. Americana seeks simultaneously to savour the l