Download or read book Identity and the Failure of America written by John Michael and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Thomas Jefferson to John Rawls, justice has been at the center of America’s self-image and national creed. At the same time, for many of its peoples-from African slaves and European immigrants to women and the poor-the American experience has been defined by injustice: oppression, disenfranchisement, violence, and prejudice. In Identity and the Failure of America, John Michael explores the contradictions between a mythic national identity promising justice to all and the realities of a divided, hierarchical, and frequently iniquitous history and social order. Through a series of insightful readings, Michael analyzes such cultural moments as the epic dramatization of the tension between individual ambition and communal complicity in Moby-Dick, attempts to effect social change through sympathy in the novels of Lydia Marie Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s antislavery activism and Frederick Douglass’s long fight for racial equity, and the divisive figures of John Brown and Nat Turner in American letters and memory. Focusing on exemplary instances when the nature of the United States as an essentially conflicted nation turned to force, Michael ultimately posits the development of a more cosmopolitan American identity, one that is more fully and justly imagined in response to the nation’s ethical failings at home and abroad. John Michael is professor of English and of visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester. He is the author of Anxious Intellects: Academic Professionals, Public Intellectuals, and Enlightenment Values and Emerson and Skepticism: The Cipher of the World.
Download or read book Who are We written by Samuel P. Huntington and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America was founded by settlers who brought with them a distinct culture including the English language, Protestant values, individualism, religious commitment, and respect for law. The waves of later immigrants came gradually accepted these values and assimilated into America's Anglo-Protestant culture. More recently, however, national identity has been eroded by the problems of assimilating massive numbers of immigrants, bilingualism, multiculturalism, the devaluation of citizenship, and the "denationalization" of American élites. September 11 brought a revival of American patriotism, but already there are signs that this is fading. This book shows the need for us to reassert the core values that make us Americans.--From publisher description.
Download or read book Who Lost America written by Bromwell Ault and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2011-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bromwell Ault is an essayist and a moralist. He presents here a group of essays examining the changes and weaknesses he has seen growing in American society over the past half century. Central to his thesis is the prospect of "institutional failure" as American politics and society break down from multiple causes. One cause is population growth. Political polarization and the corrupting role of money are among the others. It is a sobering book but a valuable one. You will probably agree with much of it. You will find all of it enlightening. --- Lindsey Grant, Santa Fe, NM, 6-28-2011 The highly educated, cosmopolitan patriots who imagined and constructed the world's first truly functioning republic with its proud Rule of Law and its careful checks and balances could not have foreseen how their present day successors might abuse their accomplishments to our current dangerous level of disorder. Author Ault, a retired businessman, has dramatically traced the process by which the US has been brought to a state of moral and financial dysfunction in a new book which provides a strong wake up call to all citizens. --- Donald A. Collins, Washington, DC, author and journalist, 5-12-2011 Bromwell Ault authors a unique book from an even more profound perspective. His four score years have given him a front row seat to the rise and demise of the United States of America. Whether this civilization understands its dilemma or not, Ault clearly identifies every aspect of America's current predicament. His compelling prose connected to basic realities renders an adroit understanding of what America faces and what actions her people must take if future generations expect to enjoy viable lives in the 21st century. It's a must read for every member of Congress as well as the president. --- Frosty Wooldridge, Golden, CO, teacher, journalist and author, 5-31-2011
Download or read book Born Losers written by Scott A. Sandage and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-30 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes somebody a Loser, a person doomed to unfulfilled dreams and humiliation? Nobody is born to lose, and yet failure embodies our worst fears. The Loser is our national bogeyman, and his history over the past two hundred years reveals the dark side of success, how economic striving reshaped the self and soul of America. From colonial days to the Columbine tragedy, Scott Sandage explores how failure evolved from a business loss into a personality deficit, from a career setback to a gauge of our self-worth. From hundreds of private diaries, family letters, business records, and even early credit reports, Sandage reconstructs the dramas of real-life Willy Lomans. He unearths their confessions and denials, foolish hopes and lost faith, sticking places and changing times. Dreamers, suckers, and nobodies come to life in the major scenes of American history, like the Civil War and the approach of big business, showing how the national quest for success remade the individual ordeal of failure. Born Losers is a pioneering work of American cultural history, which connects everyday attitudes and anxieties about failure to lofty ideals of individualism and salesmanship of self. Sandage's storytelling will resonate with all of us as it brings to life forgotten men and women who wrestled with The Loser--the label and the experience--in the days when American capitalism was building a nation of winners.
Download or read book Quest for Identity written by Randall Bennett Woods and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-07 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quest for Identity is a survey of the American experience from the close of World War II, through the Cold War and 9/11, to the present. It helps students understand postwar American history through a seamless narrative punctuated with accessible analyses. Randall Woods addresses and explains the major themes that punctuate the period: the Cold War, the Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements, and other great changes that led to major realignments of American life. While political history is emphasized, Woods also discusses in equal measure cultural matters and socio-economic problems. Dramatic new patterns of immigration and migration characterized the period as much as the counterculture, the growth of television and the Internet, the interstate highway system, rock and roll, and the exploration of space. The pageantry, drama, irony, poignancy and humor of the American journey since World War II are all here.
Download or read book America s Identity Crisis written by Michael Gellert and published by . This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: his newly revised edition of The Fate of America examines the national character of the U.S. against the backdrop of history, popular culture, and media. With an updated Preface and an Appendix on the Trump phenomenon, Gellert profiles the American heroic ideal and how it expresses the nation's aspiration toward greatness and sense of identity.
Download or read book America s World Identity written by Neil Renwick and published by . This book was released on 2000-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is America's national identity? This study offers an insight into this question. It argues that this identity is constructed rather than essential and reflects the politics of exclusion. This identificatory exclusion has been globalized through American economic, cultural, political and military expansion. The study draws upon poetry, literature, art, architecture, gangsta rap, landscape and cityscape, to illuminate the construction of America's national identity and illustrates how this has been globalized in an increasingly post modernist condition.
Download or read book Who Are We written by Samuel P. Huntington and published by . This book was released on 2005-11-29 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the impact other civilizations and their values have had on American national identity, describing the contributions other countries, including Britain, Spain, Mexico, and France, have had on various aspects of American culture and history.
Download or read book Who Counts as an American written by Elizabeth Theiss-Morse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is national identity such a potent force in people's lives? And is the force positive or negative? In this thoughtful and provocative book, Elizabeth Theiss-Morse develops a social theory of national identity and uses a national survey, focus groups, and experiments to answer these important questions in the American context. Her results show that the combination of group commitment and the setting of exclusive boundaries on the national group affects how people behave toward their fellow Americans. Strong identifiers care a great deal about their national group. They want to help and to be loyal to their fellow Americans. By limiting who counts as an American, though, these strong identifiers place serious limits on who benefits from their pro-group behavior. Help and loyalty are offered only to 'true Americans,' not Americans who do not count and who are pushed to the periphery of the national group.
Download or read book Redefining American Identity written by B. Railton and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-04-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using five personal narratives and in contrast to both the traditional and multicultural narratives, this book suggest cross-cultural transformation has been at the core of America since the first moments of contact.
Download or read book Rethinking National Identity in the Age of Migration written by Migration Policy Institute and published by Verlag Bertelsmann Stiftung. This book was released on 2012-11-30 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greater mobility and migration have brought about unprecedented levels of diversity that are transforming communities across the Atlantic in fundamental ways, sparking uncertainty over who the "we" is in a society. As publics fear loss of their national identity and values, the need is greater than ever to reinforce the bonds that tie communities together. Yet, while a consensus may be emerging as to what has not worked well, little thought has been given to developing a new organizing principle for community cohesion. Such a vision needs to smooth divisions between immigration's "winners and losers," blunt extremism, and respond smartly to changing community and national identities. This volume will examine the lessons that can be drawn from various approaches to immigrant integration and managing diversity in North America and Europe. The book delivers recommendations on what policymakers must do to build and reinforce inclusiveness given the realities on each side of the Atlantic. It offers insights into the next generation of policies that can (re)build inclusive societies and bring immigrants and natives together in pursuit of shared futures.
Download or read book The American Way written by Allan C. Carlson and published by Intercollegiate Studies Institute. This book was released on 2003 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "The American Way," Allan Carlson shows how the nation's identity has been shaped by carefully constructed images of the American family and the American home. From the surprisingly radical measures put forth by Theodore Roosevelt, to the unifying role of the image of the home in assimilating immigrants, to the "maternalist" activists who attempted to transform the New Deal and other social welfare programs, Carlson convincingly demonstrates the widespread appeal exerted by the images of family and community.
Download or read book Why Place Matters written by Wilfred M. McClay and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary American society, with its emphasis on mobility and economic progress, all too often loses sight of the importance of a sense of “place” and community. Appreciating place is essential for building the strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life. Do we, in losing our places, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient individual identity, and for the cultivation of public virtues? For one can’t be a citizen without being a citizen of some place in particular; one isn’t a citizen of a motel. And if these dangers are real and present ones, are there ways that intelligent public policy can begin to address them constructively, by means of reasonable and democratic innovations that are likely to attract wide public support? Why Place Matters takes these concerns seriously, and its contributors seek to discover how, given the American people as they are, and American economic and social life as it now exists—and not as those things can be imagined to be in some utopian scheme—we can find means of fostering a richer and more sustaining way of life. The book is an anthology of essays exploring the contemporary problems of place and placelessness in American society. The book includes contributions from distinguished scholars and writers such as poet Dana Gioia (former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts), geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, urbanist Witold Rybczynski, architect Philip Bess, essayists Christine Rosen and Ari Schulman, philosopher Roger Scruton, transportation planner Gary Toth, and historians Russell Jacoby and Joseph Amato.
Download or read book Life in America written by Lee Baker and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2003-08-29 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life in America: Identity and Everyday Experience is a fascinating collection of readings that explores how people negotiate identity in the United States today. Brings together readings that provide a thoroughly engaging and fascinating look at central issues of identity and what it means to be American. Explores the tension between identity and identification to help readers begin to understand how people creatively confront the perks and perils of identity in the United States. Offers a look at a wide range of subjects including: violence and video games, queer pilgrimages to San Francisco, Filipina critiques of "sleeping around," and the significance of "lowriders" in Hispano/Chicano culture.
Download or read book The Origins of Political Order written by Francis Fukuyama and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2011-05-12 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nations are not trapped by their pasts, but events that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago continue to exert huge influence on present-day politics. If we are to understand the politics that we now take for granted, we need to understand its origins. Francis Fukuyama examines the paths that different societies have taken to reach their current forms of political order. This book starts with the very beginning of mankind and comes right up to the eve of the French and American revolutions, spanning such diverse disciplines as economics, anthropology and geography. The Origins of Political Order is a magisterial study on the emergence of mankind as a political animal, by one of the most eminent political thinkers writing today.
Download or read book The Loneliest Americans written by Jay Caspian Kang and published by Crown. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “provocative and sweeping” (Time) blend of family history and original reportage that explores—and reimagines—Asian American identity in a Black and white world “[Kang’s] exploration of class and identity among Asian Americans will be talked about for years to come.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, Mother Jones In 1965, a new immigration law lifted a century of restrictions against Asian immigrants to the United States. Nobody, including the lawmakers who passed the bill, expected it to transform the country’s demographics. But over the next four decades, millions arrived, including Jay Caspian Kang’s parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They came with almost no understanding of their new home, much less the history of “Asian America” that was supposed to define them. The Loneliest Americans is the unforgettable story of Kang and his family as they move from a housing project in Cambridge to an idyllic college town in the South and eventually to the West Coast. Their story unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding Asian America, as millions more immigrants, many of them working-class or undocumented, stream into the country. At the same time, upwardly mobile urban professionals have struggled to reconcile their parents’ assimilationist goals with membership in a multicultural elite—all while trying to carve out a new kind of belonging for their own children, who are neither white nor truly “people of color.” Kang recognizes this existential loneliness in himself and in other Asian Americans who try to locate themselves in the country’s racial binary. There are the businessmen turning Flushing into a center of immigrant wealth; the casualties of the Los Angeles riots; the impoverished parents in New York City who believe that admission to the city’s exam schools is the only way out; the men’s right’s activists on Reddit ranting about intermarriage; and the handful of protesters who show up at Black Lives Matter rallies holding “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power” signs. Kang’s exquisitely crafted book brings these lonely parallel climbers together and calls for a new immigrant solidarity—one rooted not in bubble tea and elite college admissions but in the struggles of refugees and the working class.
Download or read book Mission Failure written by Michael Mandelbaum and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mission Failure argues that, in the past 25 years, the U.S. military has turned to missions that are largely humanitarian and socio-political - and that this ideologically-driven foreign policy generally leads to failure.
