Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972-2017

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9783319893884
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (938 download)

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Book Synopsis Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972-2017 by : Michael J. Blouin

Download or read book Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972-2017 written by Michael J. Blouin and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972-2017 tracks the transformation of liberal thought in the contemporary United States through the unique lens of the popular paperback. The book focuses on cultural shifts as they appear in works written by some of the most widely-read authors of the last fifty years: the idea of love within a New Economy (Danielle Steel), the role of government in scientific inquiry (Michael Crichton), entangled political alliances and legacies in the aftermath of the 1960s (Tom Clancy), the restructured corporation (John Grisham), and the blurred line between state and personal empowerment (Dean Koontz). To address the current crisis, this book examines how the changed character of American liberalism has been rendered legible for a mass audience.

Writing the Republic

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231511906
Total Pages : 355 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing the Republic by : Anthony Hutchison

Download or read book Writing the Republic written by Anthony Hutchison and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-21 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative book, Anthony Hutchison challenges the belief that the American novel is "antipolitical" and condemns the relative absence of American literature in studies of the political novel. In Hutchison's view, our fiction is always informed by the complexities of the American political tradition, and to acknowledge this is to introduce a new, rewarding chapter of critical inquiry into the study of American literature. Focusing on the works of Herman Melville, Gore Vidal, Russell Banks, Lionel Trilling, and Philip Roth, Hutchison finds a critique of liberalism put forth by classical republicanism, transcendentalism, Marxism, and neoconservatism at their respective moments of historical ascent. He shows how these authors take very specific historical periods and episodes for their subject matter and interrogate, critique, and contextualize pivotal moments in the intellectual history of American liberalism. In their work, liberalism reconstitutes itself in the face of competing ideological pressures, demonstrating that the novel is very much characterized by a "republican" concern with the health of the polity. Considering such artists, philosophers, and theorists as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hannah Arendt, and John Dewey, alongside numerous contemporary commentators and historians, Hutchison repositions American novelists as serious political thinkers. He reveals Melville's Moby Dick to be the formal template for the American political novel and compares and contrasts its embodiment of "republican" fiction with the "democratic" mode Mikhail Bakhtin associates with Dostoevsky. He especially draws attention to the meaning of republicanism in the early national period, the place of abolitionism in the Civil War, and the post-1930s liberal retreat from Left radicalism. By concentrating on the tension between issues of liberalism and morality in the political thought of these American novelists, Hutchison hopes to advance a more nuanced and textured understanding of the U.S. political tradition. He scrutinizes a number of critical studies and makes a cogent case for a more interdisciplinary approach to the American political novel that focuses less on the politics of representation and more on the representation of politics.

Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972–2017

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319893874
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (198 download)

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Book Synopsis Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972–2017 by : Michael J. Blouin

Download or read book Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972–2017 written by Michael J. Blouin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-10 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972–2017 tracks the transformation of liberal thought in the contemporary United States through the unique lens of the popular paperback. The book focuses on cultural shifts as they appear in works written by some of the most widely-read authors of the last fifty years: the idea of love within a New Economy (Danielle Steel), the role of government in scientific inquiry (Michael Crichton), entangled political alliances and legacies in the aftermath of the 1960s (Tom Clancy), the restructured corporation (John Grisham), and the blurred line between state and personal empowerment (Dean Koontz). To address the current crisis, this book examines how the changed character of American liberalism has been rendered legible for a mass audience.

Philip Roth and the American Liberal Tradition

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498511813
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Philip Roth and the American Liberal Tradition by : Andy Connolly

Download or read book Philip Roth and the American Liberal Tradition written by Andy Connolly and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-09-20 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Roth and the American Liberal Tradition offers a fresh reading of the later career development of one of America’s most celebrated authors. Through a contextual analysis of a select number of texts, this innovative study discusses how famed novels such as American Pastoral and The Plot against America demonstrate Philip Roth’s considerable interest in mapping, by means of his unique literary talent, the changing shape and fortunes of American liberalism since the 1930s. By viewing these novels and other seminal works of his later period through a wider historical lens, this book informs readers of the myriad ways in which Roth’s major phase of writing since the mid-1990s has shown considerableconcern with questions of class, ethnicity, race, gender, and literary culture, all of which have been key components in the shifting intellectual and political makeup of American liberal ideology from the New Deal to our present time. This bookgoes beyond a mere historical analysis by taking a new look at how Roth’s experimentations in narrative style and his appeal to ahistorical notions of literary tradition rest in complex alignment with his fictional treatment of aspects of American history. This novel work of criticism demonstrates a heightened awareness of Roth’s career-length fascination with the formal characteristics of fiction, making clear to its audience that any reductively linear reading of Roth as a political novelist should be avoided at all costs. Ultimately, Philip Roth and the American Liberal Tradition offers a stimulatingly intelligent approach to the art of one of America’s true literary titans, providing the focused reader with a nuanced understanding of how Roth’s fiction has been shaped by the various competing strains in his dual roles as a disinterested formalist aesthete, on the one hand, and as a politically engaged author on the other.

Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009021931
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era by : Ryan M. Brooks

Download or read book Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era written by Ryan M. Brooks and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era argues that a new, post-postmodern aesthetic emerges in the 1990s as a group of American writers – including Mary Gaitskill, George Saunders, Richard Powers, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others – grapples with the political triumph of free-market ideology. The book shows how these writers resist the anti-social qualities of this frantic right-wing shift while still performing its essential gesture, the personalization of otherwise irreducible social antagonisms. Thus, we see these writers reinvent political struggles as differences in values and emotions, in fictions that explore non-antagonistic social forms like families, communities and networks. Situating these formally innovative fictions in the context of the controversies that have defined this rightward shift – including debates over free trade, welfare reform, and family values – Brooks details how American writers and politicians have reinvented liberalism for the age of pro-capitalist consensus.

Blood of the Liberals

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Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466890134
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis Blood of the Liberals by : George Packer

Download or read book Blood of the Liberals written by George Packer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history George Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, was a populist congressman from Alabama in the early part of the century--an agrarian liberal in the Jacksonian mold who opposed the New Deal. Packer's father was a Kennedy-era liberal, a law professor and dean at Stanford whose convictions were sorely--and ultimately fatally--tested in the campus upheavals of the 1960s. The inheritor of two sometimes conflicting strains of the great American liberal tradition, Packer discusses the testing of ideals in the lives of his father and grandfather and his own struggle to understand the place of the progressive tradition in our currently polarized political climate. Searching, engrossing, and persuasive, Blood of the Liberals is an original, intimate examination of the meaning of politics in American lives.

Forging a New America

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Publisher : Liberty Hill Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9781662829987
Total Pages : 134 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Forging a New America by : Roger Colley

Download or read book Forging a New America written by Roger Colley and published by Liberty Hill Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IS THE AMERICAN DREAM STILL ALIVE? Young Americans and their Progressive Liberal educators have engaged a significant number of politicians and pundits into pushing their agenda towards America becoming a Socialist nation. After all, isn't that the fairest for all? But follow the personal struggles and internal conflicts of a wide cast of characters in this compelling story of deciding our American future. Have some gone all the way to Siberia to restart the American Dream? Or stayed put? Maybe some win, and some lose. Will the left, the right, or the large American middle to have the last word, or is there an American founder who really had the right solution? This intriguing story can be a warning, and it can also be a solution as America is currently embroiled in political division, controversy, and social upheaval. Every American voter not of the few hard left or the few hard right will find this tale entertaining but more importantly essential in their Forging a New America. ROGER COLLEY has lived the American Dream. Born in South Philadelphia, he became president of two public companies and a trustee of the famed The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He attended Duke University and graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Semi-retired, he resides in suburban Philadelphia and Santa Barbara, California. Website: rogercolley.com

Making Liberalism New

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421440903
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Liberalism New by : Ian Afflerbach

Download or read book Making Liberalism New written by Ian Afflerbach and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book maps the rise of a modern liberal culture in the United States from the 1930s to the 1960s. It shows how modern fiction writers responded to central concerns in liberal political thought, such as corporate ownership, reproductive rights, colorblind law, and presidential character"--

Land of Tomorrow

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190909390
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (99 download)

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Book Synopsis Land of Tomorrow by : Benjamin Mangrum

Download or read book Land of Tomorrow written by Benjamin Mangrum and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American liberalism after the Second World War turned against the legacies of the New Deal era. Rather than extending the reforms of the 1930s, many expressions of postwar liberal thought recast organizational politics as enfeebling, alienating, or tyrannical. Land of Tomorrow examines the ideas and cultural sensibilities that caused this radical shift in the tenor of American liberalism. To account for these changes in American liberal sentiment, Benjamin Mangrum looks to some of the most influential writers, critics, and intellectuals of the postwar decades-including Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, Lionel Trilling, Flannery O'Connor, and Saul Bellow, as well as the American reception of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, and many other European thinkers. By revising established accounts of this body of cultural work, Mangrum charts the legitimization of new political sensibilities within the nation's intellectual life. These sensibilities opposed a social democratic order and unleashed a new kind of liberalism, one which centered on ideas about authenticity, alienation, self-management, psychological templates for societal problems, and private judgments of value. This confluence of literary, intellectual, and political history gives us a window onto the basic assumptions and key conceptual terrain of liberal thought after 1945. Land of Tomorrow thus offers a provocative cultural prehistory of political thinking's forms that remain with us today.

Incremental Realism

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Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503614387
Total Pages : 382 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Incremental Realism by : Mary Esteve

Download or read book Incremental Realism written by Mary Esteve and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The postwar US political imagination coalesced around a quintessential midcentury American trope: happiness. In Incremental Realism, Mary Esteve offers a bold, revisionist literary and cultural history of efforts undertaken by literary realists, public intellectuals, and policy activists to advance the value of public institutions and the claims of socioeconomic justice. Esteve specifically focuses on era-defining authors of realist fiction, including Philip Roth, Gwendolyn Brooks, Patricia Highsmith, Paula Fox, Peter Taylor, and Mary McCarthy, who mobilized the trope of happiness to reinforce the crucial value of public institutions, such as the public library, and the importance of pursuing socioeconomic justice, as envisioned by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and welfare-state liberals. In addition to embracing specific symbols of happiness, these writers also developed narrative modes—what Esteve calls "incremental realism"—that made justifiable the claims of disadvantaged Americans on the nation-state and promoted a small-canvas aesthetics of moderation. With this powerful demonstration of the way postwar literary fiction linked the era's familiar trope of happiness to political arguments about socioeconomic fairness and individual flourishing, Esteve enlarges our sense of the postwar liberal imagination and its attentiveness to better, possible worlds.

The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914

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Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807860093
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914 by : Nancy Cohen

Download or read book The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914 written by Nancy Cohen and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-04-03 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the transformation of liberal political ideology from the end of the Civil War to the early twentieth century, Nancy Cohen offers a new interpretation of the origins and character of modern liberalism. She argues that the values and programs associated with modern liberalism were formulated not during the Progressive Era, as most accounts maintain, but earlier, in the very different social context of the Gilded Age. Integrating intellectual, social, cultural, and economic history, Cohen argues that the reconstruction of liberalism hinged on the reaction of postbellum liberals to social and labor unrest. As new social movements of workers and farmers arose and phrased their protests in the rhetoric of democratic producerism, liberals retreated from earlier commitments to an expansive vision of democracy. Redefining liberal ideas about citizenship and the state, says Cohen, they played a critical role in legitimating emergent corporate capitalism and politically insulating it from democratic challenge. As the social cost of economic globalization comes under international critical scrutiny, this book revisits the bitter struggles over the relationship between capitalism and democracy in post-Civil War America. The resolution of this problem offered by the new liberalism deeply influenced the progressives and has left an enduring legacy for twentieth-century American politics, Cohen argues.

The Lincoln Persuasion

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400863619
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lincoln Persuasion by : J. David Greenstone

Download or read book The Lincoln Persuasion written by J. David Greenstone and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this, his last work, J. David Greenstone provides an important new analysis of American liberalism and of Lincoln's unique contribution to the nation's political life. Greenstone addresses Louis Hartz's well-known claim that a tradition of liberal consensus has characterized American political life from the time of the founders. Although he acknowledges the force of Hartz's thesis, Greenstone nevertheless finds it inadequate for explaining prominent instances of American political discord, most notably the Civil War. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Reconsidering American Liberalism

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429977409
Total Pages : 639 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Reconsidering American Liberalism by : James Young

Download or read book Reconsidering American Liberalism written by James Young and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty years ago Louis Hartz surveyed American political thought in his classic The Liberal Tradition in America. He concluded that American politics was based on a broad liberal consensus made possible by a unique American historical experience, a thesis that seemed to minimize the role of political conflict.Today, with conflict on the rise and with much of liberalism in disarray, James P. Young revisits these questions to reevaluate Hartz's interpretation of American politics. Young's treatment of key movements in our history, especially Puritanism and republicanism's early contribution to the Revolution and the Constitution, demonstrates in the spirit of Dewey and others that the liberal tradition is richer and more complex than Hartz and most contemporary theorists have allowed.The breadth of Young's account is unrivaled. Reconsidering American Liberalism gives voice not just to Locke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Lincoln, and Dewey but also to Rawls, Shklar, Kateb, Wolin, and Walzer. In addition to broad discussions of all the major figures in over 300 years of political thought?with Lincoln looming particularly large?Young touches upon modern feminism and conservatism, multiculturalism, postmodernism, rights-based liberalism, and social democracy. Out of these contemporary materials Young synthesizes a new position, a smarter and tougher liberalism not just forged from historical materials but reshaped in the rough and tumble of contemporary thought and politics.This exceptionally timely study is both a powerful survey of the whole of U.S. political thought and a trenchant critique of contemporary political debates. At a time of acrimony and confusion in our national politics, Young enables us to see that salvaging a viable future depends upon our understanding how we have reached this point.Never without his own opinions, Young is scrupulously fair to the widest range of thinkers and marvelously clear in getting to the heart of their ideas. Although his book is a substantial contribution to political theory and the history of ideas, it is always accessible and lively enough for the informed general reader. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of U.S. political thought or, indeed, about the future of the country itself.

Making Sense of American Liberalism

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Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252093984
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Sense of American Liberalism by : Jonathan Bell

Download or read book Making Sense of American Liberalism written by Jonathan Bell and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-04-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of thoughtful and timely essays offers refreshing and intelligent new perspectives on postwar American liberalism. Sophisticated yet accessible, Making Sense of American Liberalism challenges popular myths about liberalism in the United States. The volume presents the Democratic Party and liberal reform efforts such as civil rights, feminism, labor, and environmentalism as a more united, more radical force than has been depicted in scholarship and the media emphasizing the decline and disunity of the left. Distinguished contributors assess the problems liberals have confronted in the twentieth century, examine their strategies for reform, and chart the successes and potential for future liberal reform. Contributors are Anthony J. Badger, Jonathan Bell, Lizabeth Cohen, Susan Hartmann, Ella Howard, Bruce Miroff, Nelson Lichtenstein, Doug Rossinow, Timothy Stanley, and Timothy Thurber.

American Fiction in the Cold War

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780299128401
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (284 download)

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Book Synopsis American Fiction in the Cold War by : Thomas H. Schaub

Download or read book American Fiction in the Cold War written by Thomas H. Schaub and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We tried as hard as we could to believe that politics might be idyl, only to discover that what we took to be a political pastoral was really a grim military campaign or a murderous betrayal of political allies. Thus Lionel Trilling summarized the experience of an entire generation of American liberal intellectuals who had watched with mounting disbelief and disillusion the rise of totalitarianism in the 1950s.

The Cause

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101577134
Total Pages : 855 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cause by : Eric Alterman

Download or read book The Cause written by Eric Alterman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 855 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of American postwar liberalism, told through the lens of those who brought it to life. Liberalism stands proudly at the center of American politics and culture. Driven by passion for social justice, tempered by respect for the difficulty of change, liberals have struggled to end economic inequality, racial discrimination, and political repression. Liberals have fueled their cause with the promise of American life and visions of national greatness, seeking to transform the White House; the halls of Congress, the courts, the worlds of entertainment, law, media, and the course of public opinion. Bestselling author, journalist, and historian Eric Alterman, together with historian Kevin Mattson, traces the history of liberal ideals through the lives and struggles of fascinating personalities. The Cause tells the remarkable story of politicians, intellectuals, visionaries, activists, and public personalities battling for the heart and soul of the nation. The first full-scale treatment of postwar liberalism, The Cause offers an epic saga driven by stories of grand aspirations, principled ambitions, tragic flaws, and the ironies of history of the people who fought for America to live up to the highest ideals of its history.

White Writers, Race Matters

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190687231
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis White Writers, Race Matters by : Gregory S. Jay

Download or read book White Writers, Race Matters written by Gregory S. Jay and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What explains the enduring popularity of white-authored protest fiction about racism in America? How have such books spoken to the racial crises of their time, and why do they remain important in our own era? White Writers, Race Matters explores these questions and the controversies they raise by tracking this tradition in American literary history. Dating back to Uncle Tom's Cabin, the genre includes widely-read and taught works such as Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird along with period best-sellers now sometimes forgotten. This history also takes us to Hollywood, which regularly adapted them into blockbusters that spread their cultural influence further as well as incited debates over their politics. These novels strive to move readers emotionally toward ethical transformation and practical action. Their literary forms, styles and plots derive from the cultural work they intend to do in educating the minds and hearts of those who, in James Baldwin's words, "think they are white"--indeed, in making the social construction of that whiteness readable and thus more susceptible to reform. Each chapter provides a case study combining biography, historical analysis, close reading, and literary theory to map the significance of this genre and its ongoing relevance. This tradition remains vital because every generation must relearn the lessons of antiracism and formulate effective cultural narratives for transmitting intellectual and affective tools useful in fighting injustice.