returned to the top of the bestseller lists in the 1960s. At the time of the book's 100th anniversary in 1980, Ben-Hur had never been out of print and had been adapted for the stage and several motion pictures. Reception Ben-Hur was popular in its own day despite slow initial sales and mixed reviews from contemporary literary critics, who "found its romanticism passé and its action pulpy". Century magazine called it an "anachronism" and The Atlantic panned its descriptions as "too lavish". For its readers, however, the book "resonated with some of the most significant issues in late Victorian culture: gender and family; slavery and freedom; ethnicity and empire; and nationhood and citizenship". With the chariot race as its central attraction and the character of Judah emerging as a "heroic action figure", Ben-Hur enjoyed a wide popularity among readers, similar to the dime novels of its day; however, its continued appearance on popular lists of great American literature remained a source of frustration for many literary critics over the years. The novel had millions of fans, including several influential men in politics. U.S. president and American Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. president James Garfield, and Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederate States of America, were enthusiastic fans. Garfield was so impressed that he appointed Wallace as U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire, based in Constantinople, Turkey. Wallace served in this diplomatic post from 1881 to 1885. Ben-Hur was published at a time when the United States was moving away from war and reconstruction. One scholar argues that Ben-Hur became so popular that it "helped to reunite the nation in the years following Reconstruction". It has been suggested that the Southerners' positive reception of a book written by Wallace, a former Union general, was his message of compassion overcoming vengeance and his sympathetic description of slaveholders. Poet, editor and Confederate veteran Paul Hamilton Hayne described Ben-Hur as "simple, straightforward, but eloquent". Critics point to problems such as flat characters and dialogue, unlikely coincidences driving the plot, and tedious and lengthy descriptions of settings, but others note its well-structured plot and exciting story, with its unusual mix of romanticism, spiritual piety, action, and adventure. A New York Times review in 1905 referred to Ben-Hur as Wallace's masterwork, further noting it "appealed to the unsophisticated and unliterary. People who read much else of worth rarely read Ben-Hur". Popular novels of