The Ambassadors by Henry James - Could this virtually forgotten, brilliant, dazzling tour-de-force of a novel about a man sent by a prim and proper puritanical lady to "rescue" her son in Europe be perhaps, indeed, the most exquisite sustained work of fiction by an American author? If I didn't have a soft spot for Melville and Hawthorne, I'd say yes....I still might say yes...Why do people shy away from this man? He is arguably the greatest American prose stylist ever! Is it because we never read him in high school - or in college for that matter?