Product Description
Inspired by the stories he had heard from his relatives, and making use of his experience as a prize-winning historian, Paul C. Nagel started investigating his own heritage. What he discovered will encourage anyone curious about long-ago branches of the family tree.
"There is something stirring about finding a bond with a remote grandmother of grandfather who struggle to survive when the Black Death stalked Europe, " Nagel writes, "or who had the courage to travel halfway around the globe to a place called Missouri."
With hard work, plenty of luck and a yen to know why thins happened, Nagel found forebears as far back as the 1500s and fleshed out their stories. Then he tracked generation after generation through good times and adversity, through public esteem and private shame.
Paul Nagel’s family represents only a fragment of the story of German migration to Missouri, which in turn represents only a fragment of the story of America. Yet in his hands that fragment brings alive the story of all people whose ancestors escaped an Old World and helped build a new.
About the Author
Birth Place: Independence, MO
Awards: The Society of Midland Authors named Missouri: A History the best history book published in 1977.
WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:
· One Nation Indivisible: The Union in American Thought, 1776-1861, Oxford University Press (New York), 1964, 2nd edition, Greenwood (Westport, CT), 1980.
· This Sacred Trust: American Nationality, 1798-1898, Oxford University Press, 1971, reprinted, Greenwood, 1980.
· Missouri: A Bicentennial History, Norton (New York), 1977, reprinted as Missouri: A History, University Press of Kansas (Lawrence), 1988.
· Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family (Book-of-the-Month Club selection), Oxford University Press, 1983.
· (With Robert A. Caro and others) Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography, edited by William Zinsser, American Heritage (New York), 1986.
· The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters, Oxford University Press, 1987.
· The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of An American Family, Oxford University Press, 1990.
· John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life, Knopf (New York), 1997.
Also co-author of George Caleb Bingham, 1989, and Massachusetts and The New Nation, 1992. Contributor to American Quarterly, Journal of Southern History, Midwest Review, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, and other historical journals. Contributing editor, American Heritage.
