The Stammering Century
The Stammering Century by Gilbert Seldes, published by New York Review of Books in November 2012, is an illustrated edition comprising 452 pages in English. This book explores the lesser-known movements and figures of 19th-century America, focusing on the cults, manias, and radical personalities that shaped the social landscape of the time. Rather than chronicling major historical events, Seldes connects these secondary movements to the primary forces of the century, providing a unique perspective on American history.
Readers will encounter a diverse array of characters, including fanatics, radicals, and eccentrics, as Seldes delves into the relationships between various sects, fads, and social movements. The book examines the impact of these groups on the orderly progress of America, highlighting the relevance of these themes in both the past and the present. With its insightful analysis of customs and traditions, The Stammering Century offers a thought-provoking look at the complexities of American society during a transformative era.
Official synopsis Publisher
Gilbert Seldes, the author of The Stammering Century, writes:
This book is not a record of the major events in American history during
the nineteenth century. It is concerned with minor movements, with the
cults and manias of that period. Its personages are fanatics, and radicals,
and mountebanks. Its intention is to connect these secondary movements
and figures with the primary forces of the century, and to supply a
background in American history for the Prohibitionists and the Pentecostalists;
the diet-faddists and the dealers in mail-order Personality; the play censors
and the Fundamentalists; the free-lovers and eugenists; the cranks and
possibly the saints. Sects, cults, manias, movements, fads, religious
excitements, and the relation of each of these to the others and to the
orderly progress of America are the subject.
The subject is of course as timely at the beginning of the twenty-first century as when the book first appeared in 1928. Seldes’s fascinated and often sympathetic accounts of dreamers, rogues, frauds, sectarians, madmen, and geniuses from Jonathan Edwards to the messianic murderer Matthias have established The Stammering Century not only as a lasting contribution to American history but as a classic in its own right.
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