The Greater Journey (2011) (edit title/settings)

Summary edit see section history

People edit see section history

• Samuel Morse: An American inventor & painter who helped develop Morse Code and the telegraph system. He was a close friend of James Fenimore Cooper.
• James Fenimore Cooper: An American writer, famous for "The Last of the Mohicans". Friend of Samuel Morse.
• Elihu Washburne: An American ambassador to France, who kept journals McCullough used as research for this book.
• Elizabeth Blackwell: The first female doctor in the US.
• John Singer Sargent: An American portrait painter.
• Isadora Duncan: A famous dancer.

Quotes edit see section history

• “He needed Paris, he insisted. "My education as a painter is incomplete without it.'”

• “The first impressions were often badly disappointing.”

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• One learned to take time to savor life, much as one took time to savor a good meal or glass of wine. The French called it “l’entente de la vie,” the harmony of life.

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• “The French dine to gratify, we to appease appetite,” observed John Sanderson. “We demolish dinner, they eat it.”

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• I must study politics and war that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

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• Paris was a place where one wanted to walk, where to walk—flâner, as the French said—was practically a way of life. (“Ah! To wander over Paris!” wrote Honoré de Balzac. “What an adorable and delectable existence is that! Flânerie is a form of science, it is the gastronomy of the eye.”)

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• “Vivez joyeux” was the old saying. “Live joyfully.”

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• Samuel F. B. Morse was an accomplished portrait painter. Emma Willard, founder of Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary, was the first woman to have taken a public stand for higher education for American women.

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• Conceive an idea. Then stick to it. Those who hang on are the only ones who amount to anything. You can do anything you please. It’s the way it’s done that makes the difference. A good thing is no better for being done quickly.

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• “Do your best and your best will be growing better,” Mrs. Willard was fond of telling them.

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• And none, of course, could have known in advance that the 1830s and ’40s in Paris were to mark the beginning of the great era of Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand, and Baudelaire, not to say anything of Delacroix in painting or Chopin and Liszt in music.

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• Nathaniel Willis, who was fascinated by faces, tried to fathom why, in a crowd, he could always recognize an American. There was something distinctive about the American face, something he had never noticed until coming to Paris. The distinguishing feature, he decided, was “the independent, self-possessed bearing of a man unused to look up to anyone as his superior in rank, united to the inquisitive, sensitive, communicative expression which is the index to our national character.”

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• France: Where these great Americans went to expand their craft, become better educated and experience life in a whole new way.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Bossypants, and followed by Outliers.

Preceded by State of Wonder.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. David G. McCullough (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: DC718 A44 M39 2011
• Dewey: 920.009213044361

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › History › Americas › United States › 19th Century
• Books › History › Europe › France › Paris

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• New York Times: Review of "The Greater Journey".
• Simon & Schuster: Publisher

More Books Like This edit see section history