When Parrington's Pulitzer Prize-winning history of American ideas was first published, Henry Seidel Canby wrote, "This is a work of the first importance, lucid, comprehensive, accurate as sound scholarship should be, and also challenging, original in its thinking, shrewd, and sometimes brilliant." Alfred Kazin has called "Main Currents in American Thought ""the most ambitious single effort of the Progressive mind to understand itself."
In the Foreword to this new edition, David W. Levy argues that Parrington's intellectual survey "will stand as a model for venturesome scholars for years...
When Parrington's Pulitzer Prize-winning history of American ideas was first published, Henry Seidel Canby wrote, "This is a work of the first impo...
Main Currents in American Thought will stand as a model for venturesome scholars for years to come. Readers and scholars of the rising generation may not follow Parrington's particular judgments or point of view, but it is hard to believe that they will not still be captivated and inspired by his sparkle, his daring, and the ardor of his political commitment.
In Volume II, The Romantic Revolution in America, 1800 - 1860, Parrington treats such influential figures as John Marshall, John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville,...
Main Currents in American Thought will stand as a model for venturesome scholars for years to come. Readers and scholars of the rising generation m...
In Liberalism, Puritanism and the Colonial Mind, Parrington gives a brilliant account of the beginning and development in American letters, the early ideas that have come to be reckoned as traditionally American--how they came into being, how they were opposed, and what influence they have exerted in determining the form and scope of our ideals and institutions. In doing so, the author follows the path of political, economic, and social development. This first of a three-volume work carries the account from early beginnings in Puritan New England to the triumph of Jefferson and...
In Liberalism, Puritanism and the Colonial Mind, Parrington gives a brilliant account of the beginning and development in American letters...
The development of literature between 1800 and 1860 in the United States was heavily influenced by two wars. The War of 1812 hastened the development of nineteenth-century ideals, and the Civil War uprooted certain growths of those vigorous years. The half century between these dramatic episodes was a period of extravagant vigor, the final outcome being the emergence of a new middle class.
Parrington argues that America was becoming a new world with undreamed potential. This new era was no longer content with the ways of a founding generation. The older America of colonial days had...
The development of literature between 1800 and 1860 in the United States was heavily influenced by two wars. The War of 1812 hastened the developme...
This final volume of Vernon Louis Parrington's Pultzer Prize-winning study deals with the decay of romantic optimism. It shows that the cause of decay is attributed to three sources: stratifying of economics under the pressure of centralization; the rise of mechanistic science; and the emergence of a spirit of skepticism which, with teachings of the sciences and lessons of intellectuals, has resulted in the questioning of democratic ideals. Parrington presents the movement of liberalism from 1913 to 1917, and the reaction to it following World War I. He notes that liberals announced that...
This final volume of Vernon Louis Parrington's Pultzer Prize-winning study deals with the decay of romantic optimism. It shows that the cause of decay...
