American Unexceptionalism

Author : Kathy Knapp
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
ISBN 13 : 160938251X
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Unexceptionalism written by Kathy Knapp and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Unexceptionalism examines a constellation of post-9/11 novels that revolve around white middle-class male suburbanites, thus following a tradition established by writers such as John Updike and John Cheever. Focusing closely on recent works by Richard Ford, Chang-Rae Lee, Jonathan Franzen, Philip Roth, Anne Tyler, Gish Jen, A. M. Homes, and others, Kathy Knapp demonstrates that these authors revisit this well-trod turf and revive the familiar everyman character in order to reconsider and reshape American middle-class experience in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and their ongoing aftermath. The novels in question all take place in the sprawling terrain that stretches out beyond the Twin Towers—the postwar suburbs that since the end of World War II have served, like the Twin Towers themselves, as a powerful advertisement of dominance to people around the globe, by projecting an image of prosperity and family values. These suburban tales and their everyman protagonists grapple, however indirectly, with the implications of the apparent decline of the economic, geopolitical, and moral authority of the United States. In the context of perceived decay and diminishing influence, these novels actively counteract the narrative of American exceptionalism frequently peddled in the wake of 9/11. If suburban fiction has historically been faulted for its limited vision, this newest iteration has developed a depth of field that self-consciously folds the personal into the political, encompasses the have-nots along with the haves, and takes in the past when it imagines the future, all in order to forge a community of readers who are now accountable to the larger world. American Unexceptionalism traces the trajectory by which recent suburban fiction overturns the values of individualism, private property ownership, and competition that originally provided its foundation. In doing so, the novels examined here offer readers new and flexible ways to imagine being and belonging in a setting no longer characterized by stasis, but by flux.

Author : Seymour Martin Lipset
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 9780393316148
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Exceptionalism written by Seymour Martin Lipset and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1996 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is America unique? One of our major political analysts explores the deeply held but often unarticulated beliefs that shape the American creed. "(A) magisterial attempt to distill a lifetime of learning about America into a persuasive brief . . . (by) the dean of American political sociologists".--Carlin Romano, "Boston Globe".

Author : Ian Tyrrell
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022681209X
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Exceptionalism written by Ian Tyrrell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-01-19 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: The Peculiar Tale of American Exceptionalism -- The Puritans and American Chosenness -- Looking Back, Looking Forward: Remembering the Revolution -- Cultural Nationalism and the Origins of American Exceptionalism -- Lyman Beecher, Personal Identity, and the Christian Republic -- Women and Exceptionalism: The Self-Made Woman and the Power of Catharine Beecher -- Race, Anglo-Saxonism, and Manifest Destiny -- In the Hands of an Angry God: The Antislavery Jeremiad and the Origins of the Christian Nation -- Fin de Siècle Challenges: The Frontier, Labor, and American Imperialism -- Two Isms: Americanism and Socialism -- The Dream and the Century: The Liberal Exceptionalism of the New Deal State, 1930s-1960s -- The Newly Chosen Nation: Exceptionalism from Reagan to Trump.

Author : Volker Depkat
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 153810119X
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Exceptionalism written by Volker Depkat and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that America is exceptional, whether because of its founding creed, natural abundance, or Protestant origins, has been the subject of fierce debate going back to the founding. Rather than argue for one side or the other, Volker Depkat explores the diverse ways in which Americans have described their country as exceptional. Describing how narratives of exceptionalism have never been a purely American affair, Depkat shows how, for example, European, African, and Asian immigrants projected their own dreams and nightmares onto the American screen, contributing to the intellectual construction of America. In fact, the different groups living in America have described American exceptionalism in such differing terms that there hardly ever was a shared understanding as to what these exceptional experiences were and how to interpret them. What has unified the disparate exceptionalist narratives, Depkat explains, is their insistence on America's universalist and future-oriented way of life. In engaging and lucid prose, Depkat offers general readers and students of American history an invaluable lens through which they can evaluate for themselves the merits of the many ways in which Americans have understood their country as exceptional.

Author : Charles W. Dunn
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1442222794
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Exceptionalism written by Charles W. Dunn and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Exceptionalism provokes intense debates culturally, economically, politically, and socially. This collection, edited by Charles W. Dunn of Regent University's Robertson School of Government, brings together analysis of the idea's origins, history and future. Contributors include: Hadley Arkes, Michael Barone, James W. Ceasar, Charles W. Dunn, Daniel L. Dreisbach, T. David Gordon, Steven Hayward, Hugh Heclo, Marvin J. Kolkertsma, William Kristol, and George H. Nash. While many now argue against the policies and ideology of American Exceptionalism as antiquated and expired, the authors collected here make the bold claim that a closer reading of our own history reveals that there is still an exceptional aspect of American thought, identity and government worth advancing and protecting. It will be the challenge of the coming American generations to both refine and examine what we mean when we call America "exceptional," and this book provides readers a first step towards a necessary understanding of the exceptional purpose, progress and promise of the United States of America.

Author : Deborah L. Madsen
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 9781578061082
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Exceptionalism written by Deborah L. Madsen and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1998 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Exceptionalism provides an accessible yet comprehensive historical account of one of the most important concepts underlying modern theories of American cultural identity. Deborah Madsen charts the contribution of exceptionalism to the evolution of the United States as an ideological and geographical entity from 1620 to the present day. She explains how this sense of spiritual and political destiny has shaped American culture and how it has promoted exciting counter arguments from Native American and Chicano perspectives and in the contemporary writings of authors such as Thomas Pynchon and Toni Morrison.

Author : Rick Halpern
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 134925584X
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Exceptionalism? written by Rick Halpern and published by Springer. This book was released on 1997-08-12 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that American historical development is different from that of other nations is an old one, yet it shows no sign of losing its emotive power. 'Exceptionalism' continues to excite, beguile, and frustrate students of the American past. The essays in this volume explore the ways in which the process of class formation in the United States can be said to be distinctive. Focusing upon the impact of liberal political thought, race and immigration, and the role of the war-time state, they challenge particularist and nation-centred modes of explanation. Comparing American historical development with Italian, South African, and Australian examples, the essays reinvigorate a tired debate.

Author : Newt Gingrich
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1596982721
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Nation Like No Other written by Newt Gingrich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s become fashionable among the liberal elite to downplay, deride, even deny America’s greatness. The political correctness police insist that America is “hated” around the world for being too big, too powerful, too rich, too successful, too loud, too intrusive. And besides, it’s not nice to brag. They are completely missing the point. America’s greatness, America’s exceptional greatness, is not based on that fact that we are the most powerful, most prosperous—and most generous—nation on earth. Rather, those things are the result of American Exceptionalism. To understand American Exceptionalism, as Newt Gingrich passionately argues in A Nation Like No Other, one must understand our unique birth as a nation. American Exceptionalism is found in the simple yet utterly remarkable principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.” Our nation is exceptional, continues Newt, because we—unlike any nation before or since—are united by the belief and the promise that no king, no government, no ruling class has the power to infringe upon the rights of the individual. And when such a government attempts to do so, we will vigorously reject them. Sadly, many politicians and leaders today have forgotten our sacred commitment to these ideals. Our government has strayed alarmingly far from the scope of limited powers framed by our Founders. Meanwhile, the liberal media seek out, and sometimes create, stories intended to portray America as a bully and a thief. Even our own president seems clueless, assuring us that yes, yes, he believes in American exceptionalism, just like the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism and the British in British exceptionalism. But American Exceptionalism is not about cheerleading for the home team. It’s about recognizing and honoring the history-making, world-changing ideals our Founding Fathers enshrined to make this a nation of the people, by the people, for the people. And, as Lincoln warned, we must rededicate ourselves to those principles, lest our truly exceptional nation perish from this earth.

Author : Hilde Eliassen Restad
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780415817516
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.1X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Exceptionalism written by Hilde Eliassen Restad and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a different account of the relationship between the American identity of exceptionalism and U.S. foreign policy. Conventional wisdom suggests that a "schizophrenic" American exceptionalist identity has inspired a dichotomous foreign policy tradition that cycles between isolationism and internationalism. Challenging this view the author argues that there instead has been a continuous and strong unilateral internationalist foreign policy throughout U.S. history. This foreign policy tradition is closely linked to the self-perceived American exceptional purpose in world history. The United States, the author argues, has not vacillated between "exemplarist" and "missionary" identities to the degree conventional accounts argue, but has instead developed a complex exceptionalist identity that idealizes the "City upon a Hill" in its historical narrative, yet more often than not errs on the side of the missionary crusade in its foreign policy. Discarding old truisms and tropes, the author casts familiar events such as the Puritans coming to America, the settlers moving westward, Woodrow Wilson and Henry Cabot Lodge fighting over how to make the world safe for American democracy, and Franklin Roosevelt creating the United Nations in a new light, linking these historical junctures together to show how American exceptionalism leads to ever more expanding, ever more activist foreign policies on the part of the United States.

Author : Stephen Brooks
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0415636418
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Exceptionalism in the Age of Obama written by Stephen Brooks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The election of President Obama in 2008 and the apparent decline of American power in the world has rekindled an old and important debate. Is the United States exceptional in its values and institutions, as well as in the role that it is destined to play in world affairs? In this book, Stephen Brooks argues that American exceptionalism has been and continues to be real. In making this argument he focuses on five aspects of American politics and society that are most crucial to an understanding of American exceptionalism today. They include the appropriate relationship between the state and citizens, religion, socio-economic mobility, America's role in the world, and ideas about the Constitution. American exceptionalism matters in domestic politics chiefly as a political narrative around which support for and opposition to certain policies, values and vision of American society coalesce. But in world affairs it is not the story but the empirical reality of American exceptionalism that matters. Although the long era of America's global economic dominance has entered what might be called a period of diminished expectations, the United States remains exceptional--the indispensable nation--in world affairs and is likely to remain so for many years to come.