Description
Book SynopsisNow available for the first time in paperback, Boats Against the Current offers a brilliant portrait of a society in the midst of change, expansion, and reflection about its own future and past. Written by one of our leading intellectual historians, it makes a major contribution to our understanding of the emergence of modern American culture.
Trade ReviewThe chief interest of Boats Against the Current . . . lies . . . in its experimentation with a presentational structure that is faithful to the vision of a history without teleology but that does not lose its own bearings. -- Lawrence Buell * Journal of American History *
Boats against the Current, with its often subtle and original insights, earns a high place in the grand tradition of American studies. In resurrecting and refashioning this genre for our times, Perry breathes renewed life into American intellectual history, for which undertaking scholars should be highly grateful. -- Bertram Wyatt-Brown, author of
The Shaping of Southern Culture * William and Mary Quarterly *
A remarkable book. Boats against the Current encompasses two overlapping periods in American history, addresses several deep and complex themes, and examines such diverse luminaries of the nineteenth century as Jackson, Emerson, Tocqueville, and Thoreau. Because of this panoramic scope, Perry's work should appeal to a broad audience. -- Peter Field * Tennesse Historical Quarterly *
Solid in its research, engaging in its tone, generous in its sympathies, vibrant in its yearning to communicate a spirit of curiosity about our antecedents—and to make them relevant. -- Stephen J. Whitfield * New England Quarterly *
Boats Against the Current must be placed alongside Vernon Parrington's The Romantic Revolution in America, R.W.B. Lewis's The American Adam, and William R. Taylor's Cavalier and Yankee as one of the most innovative general explorations of antebellum American culture. Indeed, reading Boats Against the Current is like peeling an onion and discovering in the process that the layers are the core—an experience which matches that of many of the antebellum Americans that Perry treats. -- Lawrence J. Friedman * Reviews in American History *
Perry has written an erudite, suggestive, and powerful book in the grand Tocquevillian tradition of American Studies. He has done for the road what Leo Marx did for the machine: taken a social fact and transformed it into a profound historical metaphor. -- Charles Capper * American Historical Review *
Table of Contents
Part 0 Prologue Part 0 Nashville Chapter 0 Contrasts Chapter 0 A New Way of Life Chapter 0 The Hero and His Roles Chapter 0 A Vagabond's View of Civilization Part 0 The Dead Past Chapter 0 Looking for Connections Chapter 0 Choosing a Past Chapter 0 Holding onto History Chapter 0 Anti-History Part 0 Travelers Chapter 0 Ruins and Stumps Chapter 0 Tocqueville: Wilderness and Civilization Chapter 0 Bremer: Home and Citizenship Chapter 0 The Opening of the American Mind Chapter 0 Ambiguous Argonaut Part 0 Life as a Masquerade Chapter 0 City of Unwork Chapter 0 Excursion Chapter 0 Specimens of Equivoke Chapter 0 On the Road Chapter 0 Confidence and Sincerity Chapter 0 Emerson on the World of Shows Part 0 Modernity Chapter 0 Against the Current Chapter 0 A Step Toward Modernity Chapter 0 The Experience of Change Part 0 Epilogue: Retelling the Story Part 0 Notes Part 0 Index
