num_pages: 232
description: Long before the United States was a nation it was a set of ideas projected onto the New World by European explorers with centuries of belief and thought in tow. From this foundation of expectation and experience America and American thought grew in turn enriched by the bounties of theEnlightenment the philosophies of liberty and individuality the tenets of religion and the doctrines of republicanism and democracy. Crucial to this development were the thinkers who nurtured it from Thomas Jefferson to Ralph Waldo Emerson W.E.B. DuBois to Jane Addams and Betty Friedan toRichard Rorty. The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History traces how Americans have addressed the issues and events of their time and place whether the Civil War the Great Depression or the culture wars of today.Spanning a variety of disciplines from religion philosophy and political thought to cultural criticism social theory and the arts Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen shows how ideas have been major forces in American history driving movements such as transcendentalism Social Darwinism conservatism and postmodernism. In engaging and accessible prose this introduction to American thought considers how notions about freedom and belonging the market and morality -- and even truth -- have commanded generations of Americans and been the cause of fierce debate.
language: English
title: The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History
publisher: Oxford University Press