{"product_id":"9781590175958","title":"The Stammering Century","description":"Gilbert Seldes, the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Stammering Century\u003c\/i\u003e, writes:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e       This book is not a record of the major events in Ameri­can history during \u003cbr\u003e      the nineteenth century. It is concerned with minor movements, with the \u003cbr\u003e      cults and manias of that period. Its personages are fanatics, and radicals,\u003cbr\u003e      and mountebanks. Its intention is to connect these secondary movements \u003cbr\u003e      and figures with the primary forces of the century, and to supply a back-\u003cbr\u003e      ground in American history for the Prohibitionists and the Pente­costalists; \u003cbr\u003e      the diet-faddists and the dealers in mail-order Personality; the play censors \u003cbr\u003e      and the Fundamen­talists; the free-lovers and eugenists; the cranks and \u003cbr\u003e      possibly the saints. Sects, cults, manias, movements, fads, religious \u003cbr\u003e      excitements, and the relation of each of these to the others and to \u003cbr\u003e      the orderly progress of America are the subject.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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 \u003ci\u003eThe Stammering Century\u003c\/i\u003e not only as a lasting contribution to American history but as a classic in its own right.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47138078589168,"sku":"9781590175958","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781590175958_p0.jpg?v=1763805858","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781590175958","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}