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William J. Bolton’s Civil War journal is especiallyvaluable since he served throughout most of the Civil War, steadilyrising through the ranks from captain to colonel with the 51stPennsylvania. Bolton’s commander throughout most of the war wasJohn F. Hartranft, an influential figure who later became governor ofPennsylvania. William J. Bolton was lucky to have his brother Johnserving in the same unit, so he could draw on his recollections forthe two periods when he himself was out of action due to wounds.

The 51st Pennsylvania was largely drawn from Norristown, Pennsylvania,a prosperous county seat. The 51st served throughout the war in the IXCorps under Ambrose Burnside, and thus was involved in a wide varietyof actions in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee andMississippi.

Bolton was wounded twice during the war, at Antietam and Petersburg,and experienced all levels of command and virtually every type ofcombat and campaign situation. Bolton reworked his Civil War journalsometime after the war, drawing on the Official Records and othersources to supplement his own experiences.

Dr. Richard Sauer is extremely knowledgeable about Civil War sources,and clearly indicates where Bolton drew on other sources or where hisrecollections or information were in error in this carefully editedwork ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very interesting!
I'm a genealogist and was looking for some specific information which I found in a short time.Interesting reading for anyone interested in the 51st PA. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

In defence of Ernst Haeckel
Robert J. Richards is a professor of the history of science and medicine at the University of Chicago. His special interest seem to be Darwin's theory of evolution and its relationship to the Romantic movement. I haven't read Richard's others books yet, but he seems to have a "progressive" interpretation of Darwinian evolution, which marks him out from Neo-Darwinism and (arguably) from Darwin himself. It does align him with the subject of the present book, however.

"The tragic sense of life" is a biography of the German evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel. Richard has a relatively positive view of Haeckel, both as a man and as a scientist, and he defends him from the usual accusations. Personally, I have a more negative view of the man, but it's still interesting to read a book with a different perspective.

The political landscape of 19th century Germany was very different from that of the Weimar Republic or the modern West, explaining why Haeckel often took positions that seems contradictory or even absurd to modern ears. Thus, German nationalism was often a *liberal* position during the 19th century. And while Haeckel's support to Bismarck could be seen as a betrayal of liberal ideals, it should be noted that Bismarck initially took a fiercely secularist position in the Kulturkampf with the Catholic Church, something that would have endeared him to an atheist such as Haeckel. As for Haeckel's racism and eugenics, those were standard positions all across the political spectrum during the 19th century and the early 20th century.

Unsurprisingly, Haeckel classified humans in a racial hierarchy with Africans at the bottom and Europeans at the top. Ironically, however, he was neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Arab. He classified the Semites immediately below the White Europeans, wrote positively about the Arabs after a visit to Morocco, and admired precisely those Jews which the Nazis later would hate most of all: well-assimilated and successful German Jews. For a while, Haeckel also classified American Indians as a relatively advanced human race or "species". Haeckel opposed war with the somewhat awkward argument, inspired by eugenics, that modern wars tend to kill off the best individuals of the race, while the bad-bred elements survive. During World War One, however, Haeckel eventually lost his nerve and began supporting the German war effort.

Of course, this is *not* a defence of Haeckel - at least not to the present reviewer. Being a child of your time isn't always positive (perhaps it never is). However, it does show that the equation "Haeckel = Hitler" isn't as simple as some people imagine. The entire Zeitgeist of the period was imbued with racism, "progressive" evolutionism and fear of degeneracy. Haeckel never managed to transcend it, but compared to the later Nazis, he was almost a liberal!

Apart from the "Nazi" connection, Haeckel has become notorious for supposedly forging pictures of embryos to prove that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". Richards believe that the charges against Haeckel are unfounded, and that other biologists (including some who criticized Haeckel) simplified pictures of embryos in exactly the same manner in their printed works.

Finally, a more humorous observation. Richards constantly implies that Haeckel was bisexual or even homosexual, but never says so explicitly. I wonder why not? Come on, Richie, say it! Instead, we are treated to a whole string of euphemism such as "They took a bath together", "the boy became totally devoted to him", "the boy looked like a Greek god", etc.

Indeed.

Once again, I'm much more negative to Ernst Haeckel and his political entanglements than the author, but as a balanced pro-Haeckel book, "The tragic sense of life" is nevertheless quite interesting.

Excellent, but too lengthy
Prof. Richards tells us about the life of Ernst Haeckel in great detail - and dispells with the myth, that Mr. Heackel was directly or indirectly responsible for the advent of Nazi Germany.
Unfortunately, for the general audience, the book is too scholarly and too detailed, it is therefore not exactly easy reading.
Some important information and profound insights into how a biography should be (e.g. the moral standing of an individual has to be judged agianst the morals prevalent at his time, not against the morals of some other period) are relegated to an appendix.

All said, an excellent biography for someone who is really interested in Ernst Haeckel, but unfortunately too "heavy" for someone with a general interest

Darwin's Defender in Germany and the World
This is a very fine biography of Ernest Haeckel (1834-1919), the primary interpreter and defender of Darwinian theory in 19th and early 20th century Germany and, perhaps, the world.But the book is far more than even this.Haeckel above all was a first-class scientist who made major contributions in biology, morophology, and medicine, while discovering many new species and establishing classification systems for them.So, first of all, we learn about Haeckel's life in great detail. When he reads Darwin's "Origin," he undertakes to defend and propagate evolutionary theory in Germany and elsewhere in a series of publications and presentations. The author suggests that more people learned about Darwinian ideas from Haeckel's relentless activity than from Darwin himself.However, Haeckel is more than just an empirical, data-driven scientist.As the author explains, unlike Victorian scientists during the same period, German scientists under the influence of Humboldt, Kant, Schelling and Goethe demanded that science satisfy aesthetic criteria as well, for aesthetic considerations were as important as empirical fact for human understanding.I found the author's discussion of this concept most interesting since this idea had not appeared in any of studies of Victorian science during the 19th century that I have read.So we alsosee from some beautiful full-color plates included in the book that Haeckel was an outstanding artist, whose scientific drawings stand as pieces of art (many are available on the internet) as well as scientific adjuncts.

Haeckel also generated quite a lot of controversy, and still does.For one thing, he was highly combative, probably eclipsing Huxley as "Darwin's bulldog."He was seen as attacking religion by his advocacy of evolutionary principles. Most importantly, Haeckel was accused of scientific fraud by his use of certain embroyo illustrations in his publications, where it was alleged he doctored the illustrations to comply with his theories.This debate has continued until the present day as well.The book, among other things, is a 540 page refutation of these allegations--a brief for the defense. Nonetheless, to me it appears at a minimum that Haeckel exercised some bad judgment in this area.Equally significant, a more damning charge continues to be asserted that because of Haeckel's interest in eugenics, he helped lay the foundation for Nazi policies.All of this is discussed analytically and carefully by the author, especially in Appendix II on the "moral grammar" of such charges against Haeckel. Finally, Haeckel alienated most everybody outside Germany by joining in defenses of Germany and attacks on England relating to who caused the First War.All and all, Haeckel was no shrinking violet and relished the opportunity to "mix it up" with opponents.

I have been able to touch upon only some of the highlights covered in this fine book.But there are many other fascinating elements as well, such as Haeckel's reliance upon the linguistic studies of August Schleicher to buttress his defense of Darwin; his interactions with Erich Wasmann, the "Jesuit evolutionist"; and his visits with Darwin himself. Only occasionally does the science get a bit heavy here; the author writes with clarity and insight in such a way that I had difficulties only in a couple of places.The book is superbly researched, including stints by the author (a professor of the history of science at Chicago) at the Haeckel Haus and the University in Jena where Haeckel spent most of his professional career.There is a 27-page bibliography of archival and printed sources and a comprehensive index. In addition to the full color pages mentioned above, there are exceedingly helpful illustrations throughout which allow the reader carefully to follow the author's discussion of points. And bless the gods, there are footnotes at the base of the page.The book is beautifuly produced by the University of Chicago Press, which has published an outstanding series of books on 19th century science/intellectual history, and is to be commended.This is quite a book and it opens many cans of interesting worms.

A portrait of a scientific and very human life
(This review is an expanded version of my review in "Choice", the review magazine of the American Library Association).

This is an extraordinarily thorough investigation into the life of a great (and greatly maligned) scientist. It is exhaustively researched and the bibliography is extremely thorough. But it is much more than a scholarly tome. It is a portrait of a man driven by science and romanticism, as well as a window into the scientific enterprise during a different era.

Haeckel was an incredibly productive and insightful scientist; he was often mentioned as a likely recipient for the Nobel Prize in his later years. He coined many words still in use today, including "ecology", named thousands of species of marine animals, and mentored many students who became famous in their own right. His artistic talents were also prodigious, and his illustrations in his monographs describing new marine organisms are still used today as exemplars of scientific illustration. He was, to use a word that is commonly overused, a genius.

More importantly for the overall theme of this book, Richards also points out that Haeckel's publications promoting evolutionary theory, both popular and scientific, were much more widely read than Darwin's "Origin of Species". They were translated into more languages, and sold many more copies during his lifetime. Furthermore, Haeckel's blunt criticisms of religiously-motivated critics of Darwin set the stage for the current political struggles between evolution and religion in modern America. Even T.H. Huxley, no stranger to the barbed insult, is quoted in this book as telling Haeckel that he needs to rein in the polemics in his popular writings! Indeed, a good case can be made that without Haeckel's antagonism toward muddled theological criticism of science in general and evolution in particular, religion and science might have come to a better understanding than we seem to observe today. This is another, less benign, legacy of a man whose zealotry extended to all things.

Finally, Richards thoroughly debunks the thesis that Darwin's ideas, via Haeckel, were an important source for Nazi political or scientific thinkers, and thus a root cause of the Holocaust. In that regard, it is worth quoting his concluding statement, on the last page of the book. "It can only be a tendentious and dogmatically driven assessment that would condemn Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis. And while some of Haeckel's conceptions were recruited by a few Nazi biologists, he hardly differed in that respect from Christian writers, whose disdain for Jews gave considerably more support to those dark forces. One might thus recognize in Haeckel a causal source for a few lines deployed by National Socialists, but hardly any moral connection exists by which to indict him." Richards documents that the spurious Darwin-Haeckel-Hitler connection has its ultimate roots, unsurprisingly, in the religious objections to evolution that Haeckel fought against throughout his scientific career.

The tragedies in Haeckel's life, and the influence of these tragedies on his zealous scientific and political activities, add a poignant touch to the work. Haeckel's scientific output, and his championing of Darwin's theory, were driven by a tragedy of coincidence that happened early in his career, just after he read Darwin's "Origin of Species" and decided to search for experimental evidence for evolution. On his thirtieth birthday, it was announced that he had won a prestigious prize, and his wife of eighteen months passed away. His grief drove him throughout his career, and it was a powerful grief.

Beyond the narrative that gives us insight into the man and his times, and in addition to the excruciatingly well-documented historical facts, the book has one other illuminating attraction. The appendices, found both at the end of several chapters and also at the end of the work, not only enhance the reader's understanding of this specific history, but also are extremely valuable guides to reading other histories. This is a master work, and belongs in the library of anyone who has an interest in the history of evolutionary science.
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The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
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British Library

T132486



Lewes : printed by W. and A. Lee, 1799. [4],19,[1]p. ; 8° ... Read more

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Originally published in 1897.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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This 40-page booklet-sized magazine was a short-lived reincarnation of the original Help Magazine, which ended with #26 in September 1965. Reprints 7 pages of Roy Doty Laugh-In comic strips from 1968; discusses history of Help Magazine; the suppressed story of Curious G*orge Robs A Bank! ... Read more