Overview
To the list of John Updike's well-intentioned protagonists--Rabbit Angstrom, Richard Maple, Henry Bech--add James Buchanan, the harried fifteenth president of the United States (1857-1861). In what the author calls "a kind of novel, conceived in the form of a play," Buchanan's political and private lives are represented as aspects of his spiritual life, whose crowning, condensing act is the act of dying. This definitive edition includes a Foreword by Updike, discussing early productions of the work, the historical context in which it was written, and its kinship to his later novel Memories of the Ford Administration. A wide-ranging Afterword fleshes out this dramatic portrait of one of America's lesser known, and least appreciated, leaders.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780812984903
- ISBN-10: 0812984900
- Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
- Publish Date: April 2013
- Dimensions: 8.23 x 5.53 x 0.56 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.45 pounds
- Page Count: 256
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