description: (Winner of Pulitzer &amp; Bancroft Prize) This is an extraordinary study of a father and son who embodied the contradictions that divided America in the early days of the Republic. William Cooper rose from humble origins to become a wealthy land speculator and U.S. congressman in what had until lately been the wilderness of upstate New York. But his high-handed style of governing resulted in his fall from power and political disgrace. His son James Fenimore Cooper became one of this country's first popular novelists, The Pioneers. In it, he tried to come to terms with his father's failure and to reclaim in literature the estate he had lost in life. William Cooper's Town dramatizes the clash between gentility and democracy that was one of the principal consequences of the American Revolution. As Alan Taylor insists, this decisive conflict was played out in the polls and on the pages of our national literature. "Marvelous . . . Taylor's intellectual grasp never fails." (The New Yorker)
language: English
title: William Cooper's Town
titlecomplete: William Cooper's Town
genres: Biography, History, The United States Of America, Politics, American History, American, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Unfinished, Grad School
ratings_count: 599
awards: awardedAt: 820483200000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: History, awardedAt: 820483200000
name: Bancroft Prize, awardedAt: 820483200000
name: Albert J. Beveridge Award
publisher: Books on Tape, Inc.