Joelle Delbourgo Associates, Inc.
“The Counterfeit Countess” Book Talk
digital media executive Charity C. Elder posits that there has never been a better time to be a Black woman in the United States.Now in paperback! AN ASSASSIN IN UTOPIA: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Cult and a President’s Murder, by New York Times bestselling author Susan Wels (Pegasus, January 2024)
“Packed with colorful characters and well-chosen details, this book is an engrossing account of Victorian-era American eccentricity. I was thoroughly immersed. The ending is a page turner as Wels describes Garfield’s last days alive, oblivious to Guiteau skulking in the shadows.” ― The Washington Post
This true crime odyssey explores a forgotten, astonishing chapter of American history, leading the reader from a free-love community in upstate New York to the shocking assassination of President James
Garfield.
It was heaven on earth—and, some whispered, the devil’s garden.
Thousands came by trains and carriages to see this new Eden, carved from hundreds of acres of wild woodland. They marveled at orchards bursting with fruit, thick herds of Ayrshire cattle and Cotswold sheep, and whizzing mills. They gaped at the people who lived in this place—especially the women, with their queer cropped hair and shamelessly short skirts. The men and women of this strange outpost worked and slept together—without sin, they claimed.
From 1848 to 1881, a small utopian colony in upstate New York—the Oneida Community—was known for its shocking sexual practices, from open marriage and free love to the sexual training of young boys by older women. And in 1881, a one-time member of the Oneida Community—Charles Julius Guiteau—assassinated President James Garfield in a brutal crime that shook America to its core.
An Assassin in Utopia is the first book that weaves together these explosive stories in a tale of utopian experiments, political machinations, and murder. This deeply researched narrative—by bestselling author Susan Wels—tells the true, interlocking stories of the Oneida Community and its radical founder, John Humphrey Noyes; his idol, the eccentric newspaper publisher Horace Greeley (founder of the New Yorker and the New York Tribune); and the gloomy, indecisive President James Garfield—who was assassinated after his first six months in office.
Juxtaposed to their stories is the odd tale of Garfield’s assassin, the demented Charles Julius Guiteau, who was connected to all of them in extraordinary, surprising ways.
Against a vivid backdrop of ambition, hucksterism, epidemics, and spectacle, the book’s interwoven stories fuse together in the climactic murder of President Garfield in 1881—at the same time as the Oneida Community collapsed.
Colorful and compelling, An Assassin in Utopia is a page-turning odyssey through America’s nineteenth-century cultural and political landscape.
Susan Wels is a bestselling author, historian, and journalist. Her Titanic: Legacy of the World’s Greatest Ocean Liner spent fourteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list; the book was also a Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today bestseller. Her work has received press coverage in PEOPLE, Smithsonian’s Air & Space Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the San Jose Mercury-News among many other journals. Wels’s work as a historian includes her acclaimed San Francisco: Arts for the City as well as her research on the role of women at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Wels and her husband divide their time between the San Francisco Bay Area and their farm in the south of Chile.
How can education protect and strengthen democracy?
In an era when democracy is at critical risk, is it reasonable to expect the education system―already buckling under the ordeal of a global pandemic―to solve the converging problems of inequality, climate change, and erosion of trust in government and science? Will more civics instruction help? In Can Schools Save Democracy? Michael J. Feuer offers a new approach to addressing these questions with a strategy for improving the process and substance of civic education.
Although schooling alone cannot save democracy, it must play a part. Feuer introduces a framework for educator preparation that emphasizes collective action, experiential learning, and partnerships between schools and their complex constituencies. His proposed reform aims to equip teachers with an appreciation of the paradoxes of pluralism―in particular, the tensions between individual choice and
social outcomes. And he offers practical suggestions for how to bring those concepts to life so that students in and out of the classroom acquire the skills, knowledge, and dispositions for enlightened democratic leadership.
Adopting a definition of public education that celebrates the engagement between schools and their environments, Feuer argues for reinforced partnerships within the education system and between educators and their diverse constituents. He anticipates new collaborations between education faculty and their colleagues in the behavioral, social, and physical sciences and humanities; stronger links between schools and their complex outside environments; and improved mechanisms for global cooperation. Can Schools Save Democracy? includes lively examples of how theoretical principles can inform familiar problems and offers a hopeful path for progress toward a stronger democracy.
In a time of fierce differences over the fundamental values of our democracy, Michael Feuer brings to the argument a clear understanding of the politics, psychology, and economics of education and their relationship to concepts of the “common good.” This book builds on the author’s deep knowledge and experience to propose a new and hopeful roadmap for civic learning. It is rich in ideas and insights that make it a must-read for educators, policy makers, and everyone who cares about the future of our democracy.
―Richard C. Atkinson, President Emeritus, University of California
In a democracy, the education of the young is the one true hope for its preservation. Thomas Jefferson knew that John Dewey knew that, and Michael Feuer reminds us once again. Hopefully, we listen to this important message.
―Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin
At a time when one national political party has decided that the path to permanent political power goes through local school board elections, Feuer provides both scholars and practitioners with a timely and reasoned way forward on how schools can once again be called upon to save democracy by revitalizing civic education at a critical and pivotal moment in our history.
―Carl A. Cohn, Claremont Graduate University
This is a deeply knowledgeable, deeply wise, deeply felt brief for civics education in public schools. Michael Feuer’s optimism that schools can make a meaningful dent in our stubborn, stuck national political culture is inspiring, and it ought to be a spur to action.
―Nicholas Lemann, Columbia Journalism School
Michael Feuer is Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development and Professor of Education Policy at The George Washington University, and President of the National Academy of Education. Before coming to GW in 2010, Feuer held several positions at the National Research Council of the National Academies: he was the founding director of the Board on Testing and Assessment and most recently served as the executive director of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Prior to joining the NRC he was a senior analyst and project director at the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment. Feuer received his BA in English from Queens College (CUNY), an MA in public management from the Wharton School, and a PhD in public policy analysis from the University of Pennsylvania. He was on the faculty at Drexel University from 1981-1986, and has taught courses in education policy and research at Penn and Georgetown. Feuer consults regularly to educational institutions and government in the US, Israel, Europe, and the Middle East. He has published in education, economics, philosophy, and policy journals and has had reviews, essays, and poems in newspapers and magazines in Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New York. Feuer is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Educational Research Association, and co-chair of the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE). In 2014 President Obama appointed Feuer to the National Board of Education Sciences. Feuer lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Regine.
An entertaining illustrated deep dive into muscle, from the discovery of human anatomy to the latest science of strength training.
Muscle tissue powers every heartbeat, blink, jog, jump, and goosebump. It is the force behind the most critical bodily functions, including digestion and childbirth, as well as extreme feats of athleticism. We can mold our muscles with exercise and observe the results.
In this lively, lucid book, orthopedic surgeon Roy A. Meals takes us on a wide-ranging journey through
anatomy, biology, history, and health to unlock the mysteries of our muscles. He breaks down the three different types of muscle―smooth, skeletal, and cardiac―and explores major advancements in medicine and fitness, including cutting-edge gene-editing research and the science behind popular muscle conditioning strategies. Along the way, he offers insight into the changing aesthetic and cultural conception of muscle, from Michelangelo’s David to present-day bodybuilders, and shares fascinating examples of strange muscular maladies and their treatment. Brimming with fun facts and infectious enthusiasm, Muscle sheds light on the astonishing, essential tissue that moves us through life.
Reviews:
About the Author: Roy A. Meals, MD, is a clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at UCLA and the author of Bones: Inside and Out, a Barnes & Noble Best Science Book of 2020. The author of several medical books, he has practiced, researched, and taught hand surgery for forty years. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
during one summer in the Hamptons. (Gallery Books, World Rights, August 2024)