This week on the Lectures and History podcast, University of Dallas history professor Susan Hanson,

discusses the 1919 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Education of Henry Adams.

The book has been described as a look at the transformation of American life during the so-called

Gilded Age and is listed by Modern Library as one of the top 100 English language nonfiction

books of the 20th century. More after this. We are here to discuss the education of Henry Adams, which is a book that you have

been reading since the beginning of the semester, and which you all find a little bit hard

to believe won the Pulitzer Prize in 1918 just at the end of World War I at the beginning of the 20th

century and which was called the greatest English language nonfiction American book of

the 20th century in all of the lists in the year 2000s.

And so you have been trudging through this book.

And your initial take, I'm sure, is that it's practically unreadable, right?

Because Henry Adams is very overeducated, and he alludes to all sorts of things that you don't know what he's referring to, right? And he seems to be

going off on all sorts of intellectual tangents that are difficult to follow. And yet, as we have

arrived at the third part of the book, some of you are finding him fascinating and enjoyable, right?

And have been reading, emailing me to say that you're finding him fascinating and enjoyable, right?

So let's get ourselves oriented to the third part of this book, yes?

So you are here at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas, named after Christopher Columbus,

his first biographer, first English language biographer, Washington Irving.

You are here in 2025, 25 years after the year 2000, Y2K.

Trying to get a read on the 20th century, 1900, 1800, 1, 1700, 1700, 1, 1700, 1, 1700, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,500,

with those two all-important dates

for American civilization,

...