num_pages: 368
description: Having risen to national attention with his first book, For Common Things , Jedediah Purdy now cements his claim to being one of the most arresting public intellectuals of his generation. In Being America , Purdy turns his erudition and unique perspective to America’s relationship with a world that both admires and hates it.Purdy has absorbed insights from people around the Westernized Egyptians who consider Osama bin Laden a hero, an urbane Indian who espouses gay rights and the most thuggish kind of Hindu nationalism, Cambodian sweat-shop workers, and others. Out of these conversations—and his inspired readings of political thinkers from Edmund Burke to James Madison—Purdy breathes new meaning into the American values of democracy, liberty, and free trade. Clear-thinking and far-sighted, Being America encourages America to strive to realize the potential it doesn’t always know it has.
language: English
title: Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World
titlecomplete: Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World
genres: Sociology, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 53
publisher: Vintage