Best known for his two-year sojourn at Walden Pond inMassachusetts, Henry David Thoreau is often considered a reclusewho emerged from solitude only occasionally to take a stand on theissues of his day. In Thoreau s Democratic Withdrawal, Shannon L. Mariotti explores Thoreau s nature writings to offer a new way ofunderstanding the unique politics of the so-called hermit of Walden Pond. Drawing imaginatively from the twentieth-century Germansocial theorist Theodor W. Adorno, she shows how withdrawal fromthe public sphere can paradoxically be a valuable part ofdemocratic politics. ...
Best known for his two-year sojourn at Walden Pond inMassachusetts, Henry David Thoreau is often considered a reclusewho emerged from solitude only oc...
How did a college education become so vital to American notions of professional and personal advancement? Reared on the ideal of the self-made man, American men had long rejected the need for college. But in the early twentieth century this ideal began to change as white men born in the U.S. faced a barrage of new challenges, among them a stultifying bureaucracy and growing competition in the workplace from an influx of immigrants and women. At this point a college education appealed to young men as an attractive avenue to success in a dawning corporate age. Accessible at first almost...
How did a college education become so vital to American notions of professional and personal advancement? Reared on the ideal of the self-made man, Am...
For many, "going back to the land" brings to mind the 1960s and 1970s-hippie communes and the Summer of Love, The Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth News. More recently, the movement has reemerged in a new enthusiasm for locally produced food and more sustainable energy paths. But these latest back-to-the-landers are part of a much larger story. Americans have been dreaming of returning to the land ever since they started to leave it. In Back to the Land, Dona Brown explores the history of this recurring impulse. ? Back-to-the-landers have often been viewed as nostalgic escapists or...
For many, "going back to the land" brings to mind the 1960s and 1970s-hippie communes and the Summer of Love, The Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth...
Every work of art has a story behind it. In 1886 the German American artist Robert Koehler painted a dramatic wide-angle depiction of an imagined confrontation between factory workers and their employer. He called this oil painting The Strike. It has had a long and tumultuous international history as a symbol of class struggle and the cause of workers rights. First exhibited just days before the tragic Chicago Haymarket riot, The Strike became an inspiration for the labor movement. In the midst of the campaign for an eight-hour workday, it gained international attention at...
Every work of art has a story behind it. In 1886 the German American artist Robert Koehler painted a dramatic wide-angle depiction of an imagined c...
"The University and the People" chronicles the influence of Populism a powerful agrarian movement on public higher education in the late nineteenth century. Revisiting this pivotal era in the history of the American state university, Scott Gelber demonstrates that Populists expressed a surprising degree of enthusiasm for institutions of higher learning. More fundamentally, he argues that the mission of the state university, as we understand it today, evolved from a fractious but productive relationship between public demands and academic authority. Populists attacked a variety of...
"The University and the People" chronicles the influence of Populism a powerful agrarian movement on public higher education in the late nineteenth...
Ernest Hemingway's groundbreaking prose style and examination of timeless themes made him one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century. Yet in "Ernest Hemingway: Thought in Action," Mark Cirino observes, "Literary criticism has accused Hemingway of many things but thinking too deeply is not one of them." Although much has been written about the author's love of action-hunting, fishing, drinking, bullfighting, boxing, travel, and the moveable feast-Cirino looks at Hemingway's focus on the modern mind, paralleling the interest in consciousness of such predecessors and...
Ernest Hemingway's groundbreaking prose style and examination of timeless themes made him one of the most important American writers of the twentieth ...
When Sacvan Bercovitch s The American Jeremiad first appeared in 1978, it was hailed as a landmark study of dissent and cultural formation in America, from the Puritans writings through the major literary works of the antebellum era. For this long-awaited anniversary edition, Bercovitch has written a deeply thoughtful and challenging new preface that reflects on his classic study of the role of the political sermon, or jeremiad, in America from a contemporary perspective, while assessing developments in the field of American studies and the culture at large.
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When Sacvan Bercovitch s The American Jeremiad first appeared in 1978, it was hailed as a landmark study of dissent and cultural formation i...
Roman Catholic writers in colonial America played only a minority role in debates about religion, politics, morality, national identity, and literary culture. However, the commercial print revolution of the nineteenth century, combined with the arrival of many European Catholic immigrants, provided a vibrant evangelical nexus in which Roman Catholic print discourse would thrive among a tightly knit circle of American writers and readers. James Emmett Ryan's pathbreaking study follows the careers of important nineteenth-century religionists including Orestes Brownson, Isaac Hecker, Anna Hanson...
Roman Catholic writers in colonial America played only a minority role in debates about religion, politics, morality, national identity, and literary ...
As the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated in the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government directed billions of dollars to American universities to promote higher enrollments, studies of foreign languages and cultures, and, especially, scientific research. In Cold War University, Matthew Levin traces the paradox that developed: higher education became increasingly enmeshed in the Cold War struggle even as university campuses became centers of opposition to Cold War policies. The partnerships between the federal government and major research universities sparked a...
As the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated in the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government directed billions of dollars t...
