The Civil War Dead and American Modernity offers a fundamental rethinking of the cultural importance of the American Civil War dead.

Surveyors of Customs explores literature's insights into how America-its soft capitalism, its "democratized" inequality, its Americanization of power-"ticks." Joel Pfister argues that writers from Benjamin Franklin to Louise Erdrich can be read as critical "surveyors" of customs, culture, hegemony, capitalism's emotional logic, and much else.

In The Puritan Cosmopolis, Nan Goodman demonstrates how the Puritans were far from an insular coterie that ignored the larger global community. Drawing on letters, diaries, political pamphlets, poetry, and other cultural materials, The Puritan Cosmopolis demonstrates how the Puritan population increasingly saw themselves as global citizens.