Description
Book SynopsisLong before the United States was a nation, it was a set of ideas, projected onto the New World by European explorers with centuries of belief and thought in tow. From this foundation of expectation and experience, America and American thought grew in turn, enriched by the bounties of the Enlightenment, the philosophies of liberty and individuality, the tenets of religion, and the doctrines of republicanism and democracy. Crucial to this development were the thinkers who nurtured it, from Thomas Jefferson to Ralph Waldo Emerson, W.E.B. DuBois to Jane Addams, and Betty Friedan to Richard Rorty. The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History traces how Americans have addressed the issues and events of their time and place, whether the Civil War, the Great Depression, or the culture wars of today. Spanning a variety of disciplines, from religion, philosophy, and political thought, to cultural criticism, social theory, and the arts, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen shows how ideas have been major
Trade ReviewThe Ideas that Made America captures the present state of the field at a pivotal moment, one which demands clarity about what kind of intellectual history we want, and what we want from intellectual history. * Andrew Seal, Economics Department at the Paul College of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire, Society for U.S. Intellectual History *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: World of Empires (Precontact-1740) Chapter 2: America and the Transatlantic Enlightenment (1740-1800) Chapter 3: From Republican to Romantic (1800-1850) Chapter 4: Contests of Intellectual Authority (1850-1890) Chapter 5: Fin-de-siècle Revolts against Absolutes (1890-1920) Chapter 6: Roots and Rootlessness from the First World War to the Second (1920-45) Chapter 7: The Opening of the American Mind (1945-1970) Chapter 8: The End of Universalism (1962-1990s) Epilogue: Rethinking Cosmopolitanism in an Age of Globalization Notes Index
