Talk:Henry Adams

message: Should we have american english for articles about americans? e.g. Practiced<=>practised
:Yes, that is suggested on the FAQ: "The official policy is to use British (AKA "Commonwealth") spelling when writing about British (or Commonwealth) topics, and American for topics relating to the United States." I'll fix it. --RedJ 17 18:36, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Type of English

message: The "non fiction" work The Education of Henry Adams should not be referred to as a novel in this article.
Actually, it is more literary than non-fictional in the way that most historical fiction is. Adams manipulates events that happened to fit a particular bent, even making himself a third person character in his autobiography. Read an excerpt if you disagree. It is a novel.
why is there a section titled "the second law of thermodynamics"?????? 71.115.7.64 (talk) 19:27, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is what it claims to be a memoir of the events that educated him. The fact that he excludes certain events or uses the third person doesn't change the genre.Nitpyck (talk) 05:16, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apparent misuse of the word "novel" 

message: The last section of this article reads like an Adams Family directory, for which there is already a category. I think it would be more helpful to limit discussion of grandfathers, fathers, uncles, and brothers to a linked entry. After all, this article should be about Henry Adams. --RedJ 17 18:42, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too Many Adamses? 

message: This entry requires at least a sentence on "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres" -- but unfortunately I'm not the person to do it.--67.86.202.17 18:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Work omitted 

message: Shouldn't there be something about his sister, Marian Adams, and the sculpture Augustus Saint-Gaudens carved for her grave? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mathwhiz 29 (talk • contribs) 03:16, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The statue was carved to commemorate Adams's wife, Clover, who killed herself.Lestrade (talk) 12:16, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marian Adams 

message: Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams - I don't see that the article links to her.Kdammers (talk) 06:02, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wife's name 

message: I've seen credit given to Henry and his dad (the Ambassador) for keeping Britain from taking the South's side during the Civil War. This was an extremely valuable contribution, perhaps the greatest made by the diplomatic branch during the war. Student7 (talk) 12:01, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Overlooked contribution?

message: Is it allowable to mention that his wife, a photographer, fatally drank photographic chemicals because Henry was having an affair?Lestrade (talk) 00:30, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: If it's well-sourced, sure. IronDuke 01:08, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: My question would be: did she leave a note to that effect? People can see one thing happening and another and connect the dots. But they might not be connected. I think we agree today that people commit suicide out of anger and it does sound that she might have been angry at him. Just want to be sure that "sources" have the right provocation. Student7 (talk) 12:24, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Doing just a quick bit of research, all the sources I see indicate that Clover Adams killed herself over grief at the death of her father. IronDuke 17:28, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

text: Looks good... IronDuke 19:45, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Wife's suicide

message: In the "Second Law of Thermodynamics" section, I have removed the group of words that refer to the arrow of time. I have replaced them with the words: "energy dissipates, order becomes disorder, and the earth will eventually become uninhabitable." See this PDF. Adams was not so much concerned with the mere irreversibility of time as he was with the disheartening and pessimistic predictions that result from the concept of entropy.Lestrade (talk) 12:12, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Disorder and sorrow

message: In the "Second law of Thermodynamics" section it is asserted that "he seems to have misunderstood and misapplied the principle." That is an unsupported claim because there is no explanation as to why he misunderstood and misapplied the principle. In what way was it misunderstood? If he did misunderstand, what is the correct understanding of the principle?Lestrade (talk) 12:50, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I deleted the following unexplained words: though he seems to have misunderstood and misapplied the principle. Cater (1947), pp640-647, see also  reprinted in .Lestrade (talk) 20:22, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Elucidation needed

message: :He published The Education of Henry Adams in 1907, in a small private edition for selected friends. For Adams, the Virgin Mary was a symbol of the best of the old world, as the dynamo was a representative of modernity. It was only following Adams's death that The Education was made available to the general public, ......
If one hasn't read The Education of Henry Adams, the second sentence of this paragraph is a non sequitur. Even if one has, it's a choppy jumping from topic to topic. I've read enough of that book to know that he talks about the Virgin and the Dynamo in it -- but not enough to know exactly how this paragraph needs to be fixed to make it more coherent. --Jim Henry (talk) 20:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unclarity 

message: Why is Henry B. Adams on this list? I thought this was a list of American Conspiracy Theorists? After reading the article I don't see where Adams was a conspiracy theorist at all. Mumof9 (talk) 16:42, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classification 

message: In the section headed Troubled mental health of his wife, Clover, and her suicide, there is a picture of a statue with no caption. Valetude (talk) 19:16, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uncaptioned pic 

message: A well-reviewed biography was recently released; the NYT review has some useful points of summary that would be beneficial to building out this article by those who are contributing to it regularly:
There are many quotes in it.
::What he became instead was one of the great intellectuals of the Gilded Age, lauded for his elegant works of history, trenchant political critiques and essays bristling with aesthetic sophistication, none of which made him happy. “The Last American Aristocrat,” a marvelous new biography by David S. Brown, reveals how dynastic burden shaped the personality and career of the brilliant, bitter and thoroughly unlikable man who brought the prominence of the Adams family, and expectations for the endurance of political legacies, to an ignominious end. In the process it provides a compelling account of America’s transformation in the space of one man’s lifetime, from a Republic where the Adams name meant everything, to an industrialized behemoth that had left him behind.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/books/review/the-last-american-aristocrat-henry-adams-david-s-brown.html
Passing it along. --Bobak (talk) 18:25, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, thanks. To be clear, the quote you gave above is from the NYT review, written by Amy Greenberg, not from the book itself. The book would seem to be the more interesting source, rather than the review. I've ordered a copy, and will report back after I've had time to read it. Eleuther (talk) 09:23, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Great! But yeah, that's what I said "the NYT review has some useful points of summary." -- Bobak (talk) 20:59, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

text: Amazon lost my order, and on mature thought, I've decided not to reorder until the price comes down a lot, based on what I was able to read in the Amazon preview. So don't expect anything more from me here, for now. Eleuther (talk) 13:56, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Useful source for expanding on his problematic personality traits