From the introduction: "Tradition has it that every American child receives, as part of his birthright, the freedom to mold his own life. . . . However inaccurate as a description of American society, the success myth reflects what millions believe that society is or ought to be. The degree to which opportunity has or has not been available in our society is a subject for empirical investigation. It rests within the realm of verifiable fact. The belief that opportunity exists for all is a subject for intellectual analysis and rests within the realm of ideology. This latter dimension of the success myth is the primary focus of this book."
Richard Hofstadter (1916-70) was America’s most distinguished historian of the twentieth century. The author of several groundbreaking books, including The American Political Tradition, he was a vigorous champion of the liberal politics that emerged from the New Deal. During his nearly thirty-year career, Hofstadter fought public campaigns against liberalism’s most dynamic opponents, from McCarthy in the 1950s to Barry Goldwater and the Sun Belt conservatives in the 1960s. His opposition to the extreme politics of postwar America—articulated in his books, essays, and public lectures—marked him as one of the nation’s most important and prolific public intellectuals. In this masterful biography, David Brown explores Hofstadter’s life within the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism. A fierce advocate of academic freedom, racial justice, and political pluralism, Hofstadter charted in his works the changing nature of American society from a provincial Protestant foundation to one based on the values of an urban and multiethnic nation. According to Brown, Hofstadter presciently saw in rural America’s hostility to this cosmopolitanism signs of an anti-intellectualism that he believed was dangerously endemic in a mass democracy. By the end of a life cut short by leukemia, Hofstadter had won two Pulitzer Prizes, and his books had attracted international attention. Yet the Vietnam years, as Brown shows, culminated in a conservative reaction to his work that is still with us. Whether one agrees with Hofstadter’s critics or with the noted historian John Higham, who insisted that Hofstadter was “the finest and also the most humane intelligence of our generation,” the importance of this seminal thinker cannot be denied. As this fascinating biography ultimately shows, Hofstadter’s observations on the struggle between conservative and liberal America are relevant to our own times, and his legacy challenges us to this day.
Los Angeles has grown from a scattered collection of towns and villages to one of the largest megacities in the world. The editors of THE CITY have assembled a variety of essays examining the built environment and human dynamics of this extraordinary modern city, emphasizing the dramatic changes that have occurred since 1960. 58 illustrations.
"The most detailed study ever published of Los Angeles' most critical period. . . . An invaluable aid to my understanding of this city."—David Brodsly, author of L.A. Freeway
“Powerful, compelling, and well researched . . . demolishes what may be the most destructive myth in America.” —David Korten, author of Agenda for a New Economy The Self-Made Myth exposes the false claim that business success is the result of heroic individual effort with little or no outside help. Brian Miller and Mike Lapham not only bust the myth; they present profiles of business leaders who recognize the public investments and supports that made their success possible—including Warren Buffett, Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s, New Belgium Brewing CEO Kim Jordan, and others. The book also thoroughly demolishes the claims of supposedly self-made individuals such as Donald Trump and Ross Perot. How we view the creation of wealth and individual success is critical because it shapes our choices on taxes, regulation, public investments in schools and infrastructure, CEO pay, and more. It takes a village to raise a business—and it’s time to recognize that fact.
A “well-reasoned and timely” (Booklist) essay collection interrogates the Lost Cause myth in Civil War historiography. Was the Confederacy doomed from the start in its struggle against the superior might of the Union? Did its forces fight heroically against all odds for the cause of states’ rights? In reality, these suggestions are an elaborate and intentional effort on the part of Southerners to rationalize the secession and the war itself. Unfortunately, skillful propagandists have been so successful in promoting this romanticized view that the Lost Cause has assumed a life of its own. Misrepresenting the war’s true origins and its actual course, the myth of the Lost Cause distorts our national memory. In The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, nine historians describe and analyze the Lost Cause, identifying ways in which it falsifies history—creating a volume that makes a significant contribution to Civil War historiography. “The Lost Cause . . . is a tangible and influential phenomenon in American culture and this book provides an excellent source for anyone seeking to explore its various dimensions.” —Southern Historian
Writing the Nation displays key literary movements and the American authors associated with the movement. Topics include late romanticism, realism, naturalism, modernism, and modern literature. Contents: Late Romanticism (1855-1870) Realism (1865-1890) Local Color (1865-1885) Regionalism (1875-1895) William Dean Howells Ambrose Bierce Henry James Sarah Orne Jewett Kate Chopin Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Charles Waddell Chesnutt Charlotte Perkins Gilman Naturalism (1890-1914) Frank Norris Stephen Crane Turn of the Twentieth Century and the Growth of Modernism (1893 - 1914) Booker T. Washington Zane Grey Modernism (1914 - 1945) The Great War Une Generation Perdue... (a Lost Generation) A Modern Nation Technology Modernist Literature Further Reading: Additional Secondary Sources Robert Frost Wallace Stevens William Carlos Williams Ezra Pound Marianne Moore T. S. Eliot Edna St. Vincent Millay E. E. Cummings F. Scott Fitzgerald Ernest Hemingway Arthur Miller Southern Renaissance – First Wave Ellen Glasgow William Faulkner Eudora Alice Welty The Harlem Renaissance Jessie Redmon Fauset Zora Neale Hurston Nella Larsen Langston Hughes Countee Cullen Jean Toomer American Literature Since 1945 (1945 - Present) Southern Literary Renaissance - Second Wave (1945-1965) The Cold War and the Southern Literary Renaissance Economic Prosperity The Civil Rights Movement in the South New Criticism and the Rise of the MFA Program Innovation Tennessee Williams James Dickey Flannery O'Connor Postmodernism Theodore Roethke Ralph Ellison James Baldwin Allen Ginsberg Adrienne Rich Toni Morrison Donald Barthelme Sylvia Plath Don Delillo Alice Walker Leslie Marmon Silko David Foster Wallace
