Download or read book A Requiem for the American Village written by Paul Keith Conkin and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this long awaited volume, Paul K. Conkin, one of America's most distinguished intellectual historians, offers his commentary on almost every aspect of the American past. Delivered to a wide variety of audiences over more than a quarter of a century, these essays are simultaneously informal, profound, graceful, and self-revealing. A common theme shared by all the essays is the ambiguous results of our nation's transition from relatively homogeneous communities, villages, and regions to a cosmopolitan culture with a centralized, regulatory welfare state, and an increasingly mobile and pluralistic population. The village's sense of local autonomy has all but disappeared in the face of these trends. With an almost melancholy sense of what has been lost, Conkin charts the strains and tensions that have marked this incredible transition. But Conkin is also acutely aware of the necessities that have fueled these changes, as well as the many benefits of the new order, ranging from an unprecedented level of affluence to the full citizenship gained by minorities. A reluctant Southerner, Conkin has not forgotten the exclusivity, intolerance, and repression that often mark provincial communities. Conkin reflects on the historians' craft and the influence of his own past on the subjects he studies. A Requiem for the American Village is infused with Conkin's razor sharp sense of historical memory and historical consciousness. From the foundations of American government to the tensions of contemporary cultural pluralism, Paul Conkin offers powerful insights not only about the tortured history of the South, but the promises and pitfalls of the American experiment.
Download or read book Americans Against the City written by Steven Conn and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a paradox of American life that we are a highly urbanized nation filled with people deeply ambivalent about urban life. In this provocative and sweeping book, historian Steven Conn explores the "anti-urban impulse" across the 20th century and examines how those ideas have shaped the places Americans have lived and worked, and how they have shaped the anti-government politics of the New Right.
Download or read book Creating the American Mind written by J. David Hoeveler and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007-04-09 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nine colleges of colonial America confronted the major political currents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while serving as the primary intellectual institutions for Puritanism and the transition to Enlightenment thought. The colleges also confronted the most partisan and divisive cultural movement of the eighteenth century--the Great Awakening. Creating the American Mind is the first book to present a synthetic treatment of the colonial colleges, tracing their role in the intellectual development of early Americans through the Revolution. Distinguished historian J. David Hoeveler focuses on Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, the College of New Jersey (Princeton), King's College (Columbia), the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania), Queen's College (Rutgers), the College of Rhode Island (Brown), and Dartmouth. Hoeveler pays special attention to the collegiate experience of prominent Americans, including Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison. Written in clear and engaging prose, Creating the American Mind will be of great value to historians and educators interested in rediscovering the institutions that first fostered American intellectual thought.
Download or read book Alexis de Tocqueville and American Intellectuals written by Matthew J. Mancini and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2006 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive in its chronology, the works it discusses, and the commentators it critically examines, Alexis de Tocqueville and American Intellectuals tells the surprising story of Tocqueville's reception in American thought and culture from the time of his 1831 visit to the United States to the turn of the twenty-first century.
Download or read book The Lost Soul of American Protestantism written by D. G. Hart and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2004-08-27 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Lost Soul of American Protestantism, D. G. Hart examines the historical origins of the idea that faith must be socially useful in order to be valuable. Through specific episodes in Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Reformed history, Hart presents a neglected form of Protestantism—confessionalism—as an alternative to prevailing religious theory. He explains that, unlike evangelical and mainline Protestants who emphasize faith's role in solving social and personal problems, confessional Protestants locate Christianity's significance in the creeds, ministry, and rituals of the church. Although critics have accused confessionalism of encouraging social apathy, Hart deftly argues that this form of Protestantism has much to contribute to current discussions on the role of religion in American public life, since confessionalism refuses to confuse the well-being of the nation with that of the church. The history of confessional Protestantism suggests that contrary to the legacy of revivalism, faith may be most vital and influential when less directly relevant to everyday problems, whether personal or social. Clear and engaging, D. G. Hart's groundbreaking study is essential reading for everyone exploring the intersection of religion and daily life.
Download or read book American Feminism and the Birth of New Age Spirituality written by Catherine Tumber and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based largely on research in popular journals, self-help manuals, newspaper accounts, and archival collections, American Feminism and the Birth of New Age Spirituality demonstrates that the New Age movement first flourished more than a century ago during the Gilded Age under the mantle of 'New Thought'. Tumber pays close attention to the ways in which feminism became grafted, with varying degrees of success, to emergent forms of liberal culture in the late nineteenth century, and questions the value of the new age movement--then and now--to the pursuit of women's rights and democratic renewal. Visit our website for sample chapters!
Download or read book Intellectuals and the American Presidency written by Tevi Troy and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intellectuals and the American Presidency examines the complex relationships between Presidents and America's intellectuals since 1960. From Arthur Schlesinger's work in John Kennedy's campaign and administration to Daniel Patrick Moynihan's role as the Democrat in the Nixon White House, through Sidney Blumenthal's efforts to secure intellectual support for a scandal-plagued Bill Clinton, every president since 1960 has had to address the question of intellectual support. Using both popular sources and some never before used archived material, Intellectuals and the American Presidency looks at the advisers who served as liaisons to the academic community, the presidents' views of those intellectuals and how they fit in with the presidents' plans. In this bipartisan study, political insider Tevi Troy analyzes how American presidents have used intellectuals to shape their images and advance their agendas.
Download or read book Character in the American Experience written by Bruce Frohnen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Character in the American Experience: An Unruly People tells the story of the American character, from its earliest beginnings to the present day. Bruce P. Frohnen and Ted V. McAllister detail how great events and daily life have both shaped and been shaped by a people committed to order and independence, community and conflict, as well as the triumphs and tragedies American unruliness produced"--
Download or read book American Small Town Fiction 1940 1960 written by Nathanael T. Booth and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In literature and popular culture, small town America is often idealized as distilling the national spirit. Does the myth of the small town conceal deep-seated reactionary tendencies or does it contain the basis of a national re-imagining? During the period between 1940 and 1960, America underwent a great shift in self-mythologizing that can be charted through representations of small towns. Authors like Henry Bellamann and Grace Metalious continued the tradition of Sherwood Anderson in showing the small town--by extension, America itself--profoundly warping the souls of its citizens. Meanwhile, Ray Bradbury, Toshio Mori and Ross Lockridge, Jr., sought to identify the small town's potential for growth, away from the shadows cast by World War II toward a more inclusive, democratic future. Examined together, these works are key to understanding how mid-20th century America refashioned itself in light of a new postwar order, and how the literary small town both obscures and reveals contradictions at the heart of the American experience.
Download or read book Transnational America written by Everett Helmut Akam and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "melting pot" is one of the most cherished images in US culture, but does it really tell the whole story? Too often there is tension between the sense of American community and the demands of American diversity. The uniqueness of the many American ethnicities provides the roots of identity, yet recognizing those differences often makes Americans feel isolated from the whole. In this discussion, Everett Akam relies on the neglected tradition of cultural pluralism to argue that unity and individuality are not mutually exclusive. In fact, each is a vital source of American identity. He demonstrates that Americans need to acknowledge that they share much in common as Americans, while never forgetting that what sets them apart forms as great a part of who they are.
Download or read book From Nature to Experience written by Roger Lundin and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Volume Two, the second of two volumes which describe techniques for the inspection of railroad track in the United States. Track inspection is described from the personal perspective of a retired railroad and Federal Railroad Administration track inspector. This volume covers rail flaws, crossties, continuous welded rail, and other structural conditions. Volume Two ends with a chapter on new automated inspection systems. The book is recommended for new and experienced railroad track inspectors and anyone interested in railroad track safety.
Download or read book Richard Nixon and the Rise of Affirmative Action written by Kevin L. Yuill and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2006 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nixon's efforts in moving the focus of U.S. race relations from reform to indemnifying damages, Yuill argues, at least equal his contributions to the origins of affirmative action through policy innovations."--Jacket.
Download or read book A World Made Safe for Differences written by Christopher Shannon and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A World Made Safe for Differences, Christopher Shannon examines how an anthropological definition of culture shaped the central political and social narratives of the Cold War era. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, American intellectuals understood culture as a "whole way of life" and a "pattern of values" in order to account for and accommodate differences between America and other countries, and within America itself. Shannon locates the ideological origins of current debates about multiculturalism in the pluralist thought of "consensus" liberalism. The emphasis on individualism in contemporary identity politics, Shannon suggests, must be understood as a legacy of the Cold War liberalism of the 1950s rather than the counter-culture radicalism of the 1960s. A World Made Safe for Differences is a highly original and controversial book that will be of great interest to students and scholars of twentieth century American history.
Download or read book A Pragmatist s Progress written by John Pettegrew and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, a host of distinguished scholars examine Richard Rorty's influence on twentieth-century American pragmatism and its commitment to achieving social democracy. Rorty's reclaiming of the pragmatist tradition and his contribution to the discipline of intellectual history are highlighted; at the same time, each essay finds Rorty's pragmatism (most fully enunciated in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity) lacking in its privatist vision of the good life. This criticism is drawn out through explicit comparisons between Rorty and his grandfather Walter Rauschenbusch, William James, John Dewey, Randolph Bourne, Richard J. Bernstein, and other twentieth century pragmatist thinkers. This volume offers the most complete historical treatment of this controversial intellectual to date.
Download or read book Apostle of Human Progress written by Edward Rafferty and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2003-06-11 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Lester Frank Ward's accomplishments are not as well known today, he is considered the father of American Sociology and his work profoundly influenced such important thinkers as Thorstein Veblen, John Dewey, Edward Ross, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In Apostle of Human Progress, Edward C. Rafferty presents the first full scale intellectual portrait of this important public thinker. Rafferty shows how Ward's thought laid the foundations for the modern administrative state and explores his contributions to twentieth century American liberalism. Ideal for anyone interested in the history of American intellectuals and ideas.
Download or read book The Next Religious Establishment written by Eldon J. Eisenach and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America cannot survive without a common faith. History has taught us that our national identity and our political order require voluntary religious and civic organizations. Following the social, political, and cultural upheavals of the 1960s, Americans are now engaged in a struggle to determine the future of our nation's character and destiny. So argues prominent political theorist Eldon J. Eisenach in this brilliant and controversial new book. Contentious debates over multiculturalism, church-state relations, and immigration illustrate America's current identity crisis. Creating a common vision for America is no easy task but Eisenach describes how the moral and spiritual foundations of a new, coherent, American identity and faith are already emerging. As in the past, the next religious establishment's primary expression will be a political and cultural order that mediates and integrates personal, ethnic, religious, and civic identities. The Next Religious Establishment alerts readers to the changing landscape of America's identity and invites us to participate in its redefinition. This book will profoundly alter the way political theorists, intellectual historians, and theologians conceptualize America's past, present, and future.
Download or read book Brahmin Prophet written by Gillis J. Harp and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2003-09-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reverend Phillips Brooks, author of the beloved Christmas Carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, was undeniably one of the most popular preachers of Gilded Age America. However, very few critical studies of his life and work exist. In this insightful book, Gillis J. Harp places Brooks's religious thought in its proper historical, cultural, and ecclesiastical contexts while clarifying the sources of Brooks's inspiration. The result is a fuller, richer portrait of this luminous figure and of this transitional era in American protestantism.
