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Imagine a boardinghouse in the days when the Civil Battle was still a decade in the future, in which an erudite, refined, witty, sophisticated, learned gentleman supports forth each day at breakfast, compelling the boarders with interesting conversation: observations on people and mother nature, occasional flights of verse, remarks on current happenings, moralizations and philosophical thoughts, and anything else that involves his mind. Imagine a boardinghouse packed with people enduring such a man and even liking and respecting him! There you have it: the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, as imagined by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., father of the famous Supreme Courtroom justice, dean of Harvard Medical College, lecturer, article writer, poet, cofounder of the The Atlantic, as enchanting a conversationalist as one would care to meet - provided, of course, you don't interrupt him! And yet, for all his capabilities of mind, he's very real human as well; there is certainly one of the girl boarders, a certain schoolmistress - keep an eye on her! As though the charm, elegance, and variety of this man's mind were not enough, the book also gives us a remarkable picture of life in america, specifically in Boston, over 150 years ago. The manners, morals, views, thoughts, and dreams of Us citizens of that time are interesting, both in their similarities and variations to your own and in the ways in which the unspoken assumptions that underlie so much of who we live have changed and yet remain recognizable. There are two or three passages in which the unquestioned, indeed almost unexamined racism of the day does appear. We prosper to keep in mind that a few of our greatest heads have thought and spoken by doing so. Because of this those expressions continue to be as Holmes published them in 1857.
