Author: Ian Tyrrell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226833429
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
A powerful dissection of a core American myth. The idea that the United States is unlike every other country in world history is a surprisingly resilient one. Throughout his distinguished career, Ian Tyrrell has been one of the most influential historians of the idea of American exceptionalism, but he has never written a book focused solely on it until now. The notion that American identity might be exceptional emerged, Tyrrell shows, from the belief that the nascent early republic was not simply a postcolonial state but a genuinely new experiment in an imperialist world dominated by Britain. Prior to the Civil War, American exceptionalism fostered declarations of cultural, economic, and spatial independence. As the country grew in population and size, becoming a major player in the global order, its exceptionalist beliefs came more and more into focus—and into question. Over time, a political divide emerged: those who believed that America’s exceptionalism was the basis of its virtue and those who saw America as either a long way from perfect or actually fully unexceptional, and thus subject to universal demands for justice. Tyrrell masterfully articulates the many forces that made American exceptionalism such a divisive and definitional concept. Today, he notes, the demands that people acknowledge America’s exceptionalism have grown ever more strident, even as the material and moral evidence for that exceptionalism—to the extent that there ever was any—has withered away.
Author: Philippe Roger
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226723690
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 537
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Book Description
Georges-Louis Buffon, an eighteenth-century French scientist, was the first to promote the widespread idea that nature in the New World was deficient; in America, which he had never visited, dogs don't bark, birds don't sing, and—by extension—humans are weaker, less intelligent, and less potent. Thomas Jefferson, infuriated by these claims, brought a seven-foot-tall carcass of a moose from America to the entry hall of his Parisian hotel, but the five-foot-tall Buffon remained unimpressed and refused to change his views on America's inferiority. Buffon, as Philippe Roger demonstrates here, was just one of the first in a long line of Frenchmen who have built a history of anti-Americanism in that country, a progressive history that is alternately ludicrous and trenchant. The American Enemy is Roger's bestselling and widely acclaimed history of French anti-Americanism, presented here in English translation for the first time. With elegance and good humor, Roger goes back 200 years to unearth the deep roots of this anti-Americanism and trace its changing nature, from the belittling, as Buffon did, of the "savage American" to France's resigned dependency on America for goods and commerce and finally to the fear of America's global domination in light of France's thwarted imperial ambitions. Roger sees French anti-Americanism as barely acquainted with actual fact; rather, anti-Americanism is a cultural pillar for the French, America an idea that the country and its culture have long defined themselves against. Sharon Bowman's fine translation of this magisterial work brings French anti-Americanism into the broad light of day, offering fascinating reading for Americans who care about our image abroad and how it came about. “Mr. Roger almost single-handedly creates a new field of study, tracing the nuances and imagery of anti-Americanism in France over 250 years. He shows that far from being a specific reaction to recent American policies, it has been knit into the very substance of French intellectual and cultural life. . . . His book stuns with its accumulated detail and analysis.”—Edward Rothstein, New York Times “A brilliant and exhaustive guide to the history of French Ameriphobia.”—Simon Schama, New Yorker
Author: Godfrey Hodgson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300125702
Category : Exceptionalism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The idea that the United States is destined to spread its unique gifts of democracy and capitalism to other countries is dangerous for Americans and for the rest of the world, warns Godfrey Hodgson in this provocative book. Hodgson, a shrewd and highly respected British commentator, argues that America is not as exceptional as it would like to think; its blindness to its own history has bred a complacent nationalism and a disastrous foreign policy that has isolated and alienated it from the global community. Tracing the development of America’s high self regard from the early days of the republic to the present era, Hodgson demonstrates how its exceptionalism has been systematically exaggerated and—in recent decades—corrupted. While there have been distinct and original elements in America’s history and political philosophy, notes Hodgson, these have always been more heavily influenced by European thought and experience than Americans have been willing to acknowledge. A stimulating and timely assessment of how America’s belief in its exceptionalism has led it astray, this book is mandatory reading for its citizens, admirers, and detractors.
Author: Joseph Bartlett Burleigh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
Author: Dennis Prager
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062097814
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 585
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Book Description
Conservative radio host and syndicated columnist Dennis Prager provides a bold, sweeping look at the future of civilization with Still the Best Hope, and offers a strong, cogent argument for why basic American values must triumph in a dangerously uncertain world. Humanity stands at a crossroads, and the only alternatives to the “American Trinity” of liberty, natural rights, and the melting-pot ideal of national unity are Islamic totalitarianism, European democratic socialism, capitalist dictatorship, or global chaos if we should fail. America is Still the Best Hope, as this eminently sensible, profoundly inspiring volume so powerfully proves.
Author: Walt Whitman
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
The Oxford Book of American Essays is an anthology of essays and articles by prominent and significant American writers and essayists. Content: The Ephemera: an Emblem of Human Life (Benjamin Franklin) The Whistle (Benjamin Franklin) Dialogue Between Franklin and the Gout (Benjamin Franklin) Consolation for the Old Bachelor (Francis Hopkinson) John Bull (Washington Irving) The Mutability of Literature (Washington Irving) Kean's Acting (Richard Henry Dana) Gifts (Ralph Waldo Emerson) Uses of Great Men (Ralph Waldo Emerson) Buds and Bird-voices (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Philosophy of Composition (Edgar Allan Poe) Bread and the Newspaper (Oliver Wendell Holmes) Walking (Henry David Thoreau) On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners (James Russell Lowell) Preface To "Leaves of Grass" (Walt Whitman) Americanism in Literature (Thomas Wentworth Higginson) Thackeray in America (George William Curtis) Our March To Washington (Theodore Winthrop) Calvin (A Study of Character) (Charles Dudley Warner) Five American Contributions To Civilization (Charles William Eliot) I Talk of Dreams (William Dean Howells) An Idyl of the Honey-bee (John Burroughs) Cut-off Copples's (Clarence King) The Théâtre Français (Henry James) Theocritus on Cape Cod (Hamilton Wright Mabie) Colonialism in the United States (Henry Cabot Lodge) New York After Paris (William Crary Brownell) The Tyranny of Things (Edward Sandford Martin) Free Trade Vs. Protection in Literature (Samuel McChord Crothers) Dante and the Bowery (Theodore Roosevelt) The Revolt of the Unfit (Nicholas Murray Butler) On Translating the Odes of Horace (William Peterfield Trent)
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 832
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Book Description
Author: Larry Schweikart
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101217782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1373
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Book Description
For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.
Author: Madison, James H.
Publisher: Indiana Historical Society
ISBN: 0871953633
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 359
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Book Description
A supplemental textbook for middle and high school students, Hoosiers and the American Story provides intimate views of individuals and places in Indiana set within themes from American history. During the frontier days when Americans battled with and exiled native peoples from the East, Indiana was on the leading edge of America’s westward expansion. As waves of immigrants swept across the Appalachians and eastern waterways, Indiana became established as both a crossroads and as a vital part of Middle America. Indiana’s stories illuminate the history of American agriculture, wars, industrialization, ethnic conflicts, technological improvements, political battles, transportation networks, economic shifts, social welfare initiatives, and more. In so doing, they elucidate large national issues so that students can relate personally to the ideas and events that comprise American history. At the same time, the stories shed light on what it means to be a Hoosier, today and in the past.
Author: Joseph Bartlett BURLEIGH
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
