It’s hard to describe how wrapped up I am in this amazing collection of letters by Mrs. Henry Adams, nee Marian ‘Clover’ Hooper. All I knew about her before was that she was married to Henry Adams, and she took her own life, and Augustus St. Gaudens sculpted a memorial […]

I know a lot of friends will be disappointed to hear this, but I’ve joined the Tea Baggers. I just got tired of thinking so much! Know what I mean? Plus I figure I can start raking in the kind of dough that apologists for corporate America make. But first […]

I’m usually reading three or four books at once: my bedside book, currently the letters of Marian Adams, my gym book for the stationary bike and the sauna, and then in the bathroom I have heaps of old New Yorkers and American Heritage and Smithsonian. And I keep a book […]

Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, in Project Syndicate: …it is relatively easy to formulate a deficit-reduction package that boosts efficiency, bolsters growth, and reduces inequality. Five core ingredients are required. First, spending on high-return public investments should be increased. Even if this widens the deficit […]

I started The Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams as a kind of project to try to find out why Mrs. Adams, nee Marian Hooper, tragically took her own life. Perhaps we’ll never know. While her death may remain a mystery, her life, as we see it in her letters to […]

Mrs. Henry Adams, nee Marian ‘Clover’ Hooper is said to be the inspiration for Henry James’ Daisy Miller and Portait of a Lady. I may have to go out and read these books. Here’s an excerpt from a letter to her dad in 1879: “”On Sunday we had a dinner […]

I’m having tremendous fun with The Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams, a series of letters to her father recounting her trips to Europe and her winters in Washington. Marian ‘Clover’ Hooper was married to Henry Brook Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, son of Charles Francis Adams, who, as US […]

One reason I haven’t blogged much recently is that I have been really caught up in The Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams. Mrs. Adams, née Marian “Clover” Hooper was a fascinating, engaging woman who wrote detailed letters to her father during her winters in Washington, D.C. and her trips abroad. […]

Heading home I’ve been shoveling so much snow I feel like The Old Man and the Sea, the Hemingway book where the old man battles the sea and the sharks to try to bring this great big fish home. Anyway, one way to shake winter blues is to get out […]

It’s one of those questions you know your child is going to ask you sooner or later, and you wonder what sort of answer you will  give when the time comes. Sure enough, the other day we were driving along and my daughter said, “Dad, why did they boo Dylan […]