The American Intellectual Tradition: Volume II: 1865 to the Present

by David A. Hollinger (Editor), Charles Capper (Editor)

The third edition of this uniquely comprehensive two-volume anthology contains many of the most significant documents in American intellectual history. It includes new selections from a diverse group of authors that cover Puritan theology, communitarian thought, racial ideology, gender theory,
cultural criticism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism. The extensive chronology has been revised and expanded to connect over a thousand important books, essays, and artistic works with events in American and European intellectual, cultural, and political history. Section introductions and
headnotes have been rewritten to provide updated bibliographical references and to incorporate new ideas from scholarly literature about the selections. This anthology makes readily available substantial selections from the writings of prominent American thinkers, ranging chronologically from the
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 to the present. Accessible to a wide range of students, The American Intellectual Tradition is invaluable for courses in intellectual history and serves as an excellent supplementary text for classes in American history, American studies, and American literature.
Volume II now offers new selections by Rexfold G. Tugwell, Clement Greenberg, Lillian Smith, Susan Sontag, Malcolm X, Hannah Arendt, Samuel Huntington, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Judith Butler; and includes writings of Charles Hodge, Charles Peirce, William Dean Howells, William Graham Sumner,
Lester Frank Ward, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Josiah Royce, William James, Henry Adams, George Santayana, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Thorstein Veblen, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jane Addams, John Dewey, Randolph Bourne, H.L. Mencken, Margaret Mead, John Crowe Ransom,
Meridel Le Sueur, Reinhold Niebuhr, Whittaker Chambers, B.F. Skinner, Daniel Bell, C. Wright Mills, Lionel Trilling, Martin Luther King, Jr., Betty Friedan, Thomas S. Kuhn, Richard Rorty, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Michael Walzer.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Anthologies, Religion, Literature, American History

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Preston Hotchkis Professor of History (Emeritus)
University of California at Berkeley

One of the pre-eminent intellectual historians in and of the United States.

Past President of the Organization of American Historians (2010-2011); Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; former Guggenheim Fellow, Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and Harmsworth Professor of the University of Oxford.

Reviews

[Dan Gorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anthology of diverse sources from American literature, philosophy, politics, religion, and higher education. Major topics include foundationalist versus antifoundationalist concepts of the world, the nature of a literary canon, governance in the United States, and the applications of economics and social science to politics.

[Karl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another 100%. Pointless rambling nonsense book.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is simple: well-edited excerpts from the most important thinkers of the post-1865 era in American thought. After World War II, its selections become less defensible, but for the most fecund period of American intellectual history, the century from 1865 to 1965, it is pretty hard to beat it for a small volume with the principal texts, well-edited.

[Max Havlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays and parts of readings that explore the several different intellectual movements in the 20th century. Definitely not a light read but a great reference book with writers ranging in political ideas from William James to Ayn Rand.

[Brittany Werges · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute must read for anyone who wants to understand the history of America. Perfectly edited, a treasure for historians.