{"title":"Cynthia Kierner","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"contrast-book-cynthia-a-kierner-9780814747933","title":"The Contrast","description":"“The Contrast“, which premiered at New York City's John Street Theater in 1787, was the first American play performed in public by a professional theater company. The play, written by New England-born, Harvard-educated, Royall Tyler was timely, funny, and extremely popular. When the play appeared in print in 1790, George Washington himself appeared at the head of its list of hundreds of subscribers.  Reprinted here with annotated footnotes by historian Cynthia A. Kierner, Tyler’s play explores the debate over manners, morals, and cultural authority in the decades following American Revolution. Did the American colonists' rejection of monarchy in 1776 mean they should abolish all European social traditions and hierarchies? What sorts of etiquette, amusements, and fashions were appropriate and beneficial? Most important, to be a nation, did Americans need to distinguish themselves from Europeans—and, if so, how?   Tyler was not the only American pondering these questions, and Kierner situates the play in its broader historical and cultural contexts. An extensive introduction provides readers with a background on life and politics in the United States in 1787, when Americans were in the midst of nation-building. The book also features a section with selections from contemporary letters, essays, novels, conduct books, and public documents, which debate issues of the era.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50094240825617,"sku":"CIN0814747930G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50367712166161,"sku":"CIN0814747930A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008377323793,"sku":"NIN9780814747933","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52405895299345,"sku":"NLS9780814747933","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0814747930.jpg?v=1763224711"},{"product_id":"martha-jefferson-randolph-daughter-of-monticello-book-cynthia-a-kierner-9780807835524","title":"Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello","description":"As the oldest and favourite daughter of Thomas Jefferson, Martha \"\"Patsy\"\" Jefferson Randolph (1772-1836) was extremely well educated, travelled in the circles of presidents and aristocrats, and was known on two continents for her particular grace and sincerity. Yet, as mistress of a large household, she was not spared the tedium, frustration, and great sorrow that most women of her time faced. Though Patsy's name is familiar because of her famous father, Kierner is the first historian to place Patsy at the centre of her own story, taking readers into the largely ignored private spaces of the founding era. Randolph's life story reveals the privileges and limits of celebrity and shows that women were able to venture beyond their domestic roles in surprising ways. Following her mother's death, Patsy lived in Paris with her father and later served as hostess at the President's House and at Monticello. Her marriage to Thomas Mann Randolph, a member of Congress and governor of Virginia, was often troubled. She and her eleven children lived mostly at Monticello, greeting famous guests and debating issues ranging from a woman's place to slavery, religion, and democracy. And later, after her family's financial ruin, Patsy became a fixture in Washington society during Andrew Jackson's presidency. In this extraordinary biography, Kierner offers a unique look at American history from the perspective of this intelligent, tactfully assertive woman.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50100135985425,"sku":"CIN0807835528G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1469619024.jpg?v=1764162316"},{"product_id":"scandal-at-bizarre-book-cynthia-a-kierner-9781403961150","title":"Scandal at Bizarre","description":"In the early 1790s Richard Randolph was accused of fathering a child by his sister-in-law, Nancy, and murdering the baby shortly after its birth. Randolph found himself on trial fro the crime largely because of public outrage fueled by rumors about the alleged crime. A tale of family passion, betrayal, and deception, Cynthia Kierner's Scandal at Bizarre is a fascinating historical portrait of the social and political realities of a world long vanished.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50101376057617,"sku":"CIN1403961158G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51564434981137,"sku":"CIN1403961158VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1403961158.jpg?v=1750987298"},{"product_id":"inventing-disaster-book-cynthia-a-kierner-9781469652511","title":"Inventing Disaster","description":"When hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and other disasters strike, we count our losses, search for causes, commiserate with victims, and initiate relief efforts. Amply illustrated and expansively researched, Inventing Disaster explains the origins and development of this predictable, even ritualized, culture of calamity over three centuries, exploring its roots in the revolutions in science, information, and emotion that were part of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe and America.  Beginning with the collapse of the early seventeenth-century Jamestown colony, ending with the deadly Johnstown flood of 1889, and highlighting fires, epidemics, earthquakes, and exploding steamboats along the way, Cynthia A. Kierner tells horrific stories of culturally significant calamities and their victims and charts efforts to explain, prevent, and relieve disaster-related losses. Although how we interpret and respond to disasters has changed in some ways since the nineteenth century, Kierner demonstrates that, for better or worse, the intellectual, economic, and political environments of earlier eras forged our own twenty-first-century approach to disaster, shaping the stories we tell, the precautions we ponder, and the remedies we prescribe for disaster-ravaged communities.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50315687788817,"sku":"CIN146965251XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52819609649425,"sku":"CIN146965251XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/146965251X.jpg?v=1763473098"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-cynthia-kierner.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}