The Ideas That Made America

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 the
Enlightenment, 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 to
Richard 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.

"Spanning a variety of disciplines, from religion, philosophy, and political thought, to cultural criticism, social theory, and the arts, Ideas That Made America: A Brief History shows how ideas have been major forces in American history, driving movements such as transcendentalism, Social Darwinism, conservatism, and postmodernism"--

"A valuable civic exercise that invites 'thinking about thinking.' " -- Kirkus

"[A] thoughtful and succinct introduction to American intellectual history." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review

"[Ratner-Rosenhagen's] curiosity about ideas, her determination to understand a diverse set of authors and points of view on their own terms, and her conviction that the messiness of the American intellectual tradition is an essential feature of American life make this book a stimulating read." --
Foreign Affairs

"Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is one of our finest intellectual historians, and The Ideas That Made America shows her in top form. It is lively, fresh, and illuminating; it casts news light on many figures and movements we thought we knew well. One could not ask for a more succinct and subtle
overview of American ideas and their consequences." -- Jackson Lears, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History, Rutgers University

"In sparkling prose, Ratner-Rosenhagen surveys the grand sweep of American ideas from the Puritans to Postmodernism, and everything in between. She shows how a whole variety of people have tackled some of the thorniest American questions over the last three hundred years: What is the place we call
America? And who are Americans? Anyone interested in the big ideas should reach for this very short-and very illuminating-book." -- Caroline Winterer, Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University

"The Ideas That Made America is an astonishment. In accessible and compelling prose, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen shows us why she is considered one of our great intellectual historians. Here, she brings us a history of the United States that is as impressive for its breadth as it is for its
precision. Ratner-Rosenhagen tends to the rich palette of ideas that have defined this nation, making sure to speak to its inalienable truths while also acknowledging its tragic flaws. The United States is as much an expression of a single idea as it is a conglomeration of competing ideologies,
visions, and voices. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen guides us through these contradictions with seemingly effortless mastery. I, for one, am grateful for her guidance." -Jonathan Holloway, Provost and Professor of History and African American Studies, Northwestern University

"Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas That Made America provides an exciting, if quicksilver, tour through intellectual history." - The Arts Fuse

"[An] elegant new bookELIt deserves a wide contemporary readership." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"[A] quickly paced but surprisingly dense survey...[The Ideas That Made America] provides a clear master narrative of the American past at a moment when people are feeling particularly whiplashed by instability, partisanship, and uncertainty. More important, the book offers a reader the opportunity
to think through an array of distinctly American ideas, and thereby become the sort of intellectual who is prepared to remake a country." -The American Scholar

"The Ideas That Made America urges us to see intellectual trends as intrinsic to America's story, not just equal to our political and social currents but, often, shifting the tides." - The Washington Post

"Ratner-Rosenhagen's sprightly tour of six centuries of American thinking ought to be a go-to text for continuing education of a less formal sort. It is informed by recent arguments over the status and remit of intellectual history as a field without getting bogged down in them." -- Inside Higer
Ed