Sublime

He was coauthor of a textbook, Principles of Zoology, his first American work, which went through sixteen editions

He was as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the creation of the republic in the eighteenth century. This is not hyperbole. It is fact—observable, discernible, undeniable fact.

Hill genuinely cared about quality rail service and about public opinion.

He held center stage through the 1850s; he had overshadowed them all—Silliman, Dana, Henry, Hall, Gray. The voice of Charles Darwin was still to be heard.

What the student needed above all was the chance to learn to think for himself. So he ought to pursue the line of investigation that interested him most, just as, conversely, a professor ought to be perfectly free to devote his own efforts however he chose. One term, a course of twenty-one lectures was offered on sharks alone, a favorite topic of t

Year by year, Hill and his railroad organizations assembled an elaborate system of agricultural research and promotion.

With its publication Wilson became, as Frederick Jackson Turner saw it, “the first southern scholar of adequate training and power who has dealt with American history as a whole.” Other reviewers shared Turner’s admiration for Wilson’s history, yet they couldn’t help but notice the author’s fondness for the Ku Klux Klan, an organization whose missi