Identity And The Failure Of America

Author : John Michael
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 0816651434
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Identity and the Failure of America written by John Michael and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Thomas Jefferson to John Rawls, justice has been at the center of America’s self-image and national creed. At the same time, for many of its peoples-from African slaves and European immigrants to women and the poor-the American experience has been defined by injustice: oppression, disenfranchisement, violence, and prejudice. In Identity and the Failure of America, John Michael explores the contradictions between a mythic national identity promising justice to all and the realities of a divided, hierarchical, and frequently iniquitous history and social order. Through a series of insightful readings, Michael analyzes such cultural moments as the epic dramatization of the tension between individual ambition and communal complicity in Moby-Dick, attempts to effect social change through sympathy in the novels of Lydia Marie Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s antislavery activism and Frederick Douglass’s long fight for racial equity, and the divisive figures of John Brown and Nat Turner in American letters and memory. Focusing on exemplary instances when the nature of the United States as an essentially conflicted nation turned to force, Michael ultimately posits the development of a more cosmopolitan American identity, one that is more fully and justly imagined in response to the nation’s ethical failings at home and abroad. John Michael is professor of English and of visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester. He is the author of Anxious Intellects: Academic Professionals, Public Intellectuals, and Enlightenment Values and Emerson and Skepticism: The Cipher of the World.

Author : Samuel P. Huntington
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780684866697
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Who are We? written by Samuel P. Huntington and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America was founded by settlers who brought with them a distinct culture including the English language, Protestant values, individualism, religious commitment, and respect for law. The waves of later immigrants came gradually accepted these values and assimilated into America's Anglo-Protestant culture. More recently, however, national identity has been eroded by the problems of assimilating massive numbers of immigrants, bilingualism, multiculturalism, the devaluation of citizenship, and the "denationalization" of American élites. September 11 brought a revival of American patriotism, but already there are signs that this is fading. This book shows the need for us to reassert the core values that make us Americans.--From publisher description.

Author : Jay Caspian Kang
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0525576231
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Loneliest Americans written by Jay Caspian Kang and published by Crown. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “provocative and sweeping” (Time) blend of family history and original reportage that explores—and reimagines—Asian American identity in a Black and white world “[Kang’s] exploration of class and identity among Asian Americans will be talked about for years to come.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, Mother Jones In 1965, a new immigration law lifted a century of restrictions against Asian immigrants to the United States. Nobody, including the lawmakers who passed the bill, expected it to transform the country’s demographics. But over the next four decades, millions arrived, including Jay Caspian Kang’s parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They came with almost no understanding of their new home, much less the history of “Asian America” that was supposed to define them. The Loneliest Americans is the unforgettable story of Kang and his family as they move from a housing project in Cambridge to an idyllic college town in the South and eventually to the West Coast. Their story unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding Asian America, as millions more immigrants, many of them working-class or undocumented, stream into the country. At the same time, upwardly mobile urban professionals have struggled to reconcile their parents’ assimilationist goals with membership in a multicultural elite—all while trying to carve out a new kind of belonging for their own children, who are neither white nor truly “people of color.” Kang recognizes this existential loneliness in himself and in other Asian Americans who try to locate themselves in the country’s racial binary. There are the businessmen turning Flushing into a center of immigrant wealth; the casualties of the Los Angeles riots; the impoverished parents in New York City who believe that admission to the city’s exam schools is the only way out; the men’s right’s activists on Reddit ranting about intermarriage; and the handful of protesters who show up at Black Lives Matter rallies holding “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power” signs. Kang’s exquisitely crafted book brings these lonely parallel climbers together and calls for a new immigrant solidarity—one rooted not in bubble tea and elite college admissions but in the struggles of refugees and the working class.

Author : Scott A. Sandage
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674015104
Total Pages : 396 pages
Book Rating : 4.0X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Born Losers written by Scott A. Sandage and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-30 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes somebody a Loser, a person doomed to unfulfilled dreams and humiliation? Nobody is born to lose, and yet failure embodies our worst fears. The Loser is our national bogeyman, and his history over the past two hundred years reveals the dark side of success, how economic striving reshaped the self and soul of America. From colonial days to the Columbine tragedy, Scott Sandage explores how failure evolved from a business loss into a personality deficit, from a career setback to a gauge of our self-worth. From hundreds of private diaries, family letters, business records, and even early credit reports, Sandage reconstructs the dramas of real-life Willy Lomans. He unearths their confessions and denials, foolish hopes and lost faith, sticking places and changing times. Dreamers, suckers, and nobodies come to life in the major scenes of American history, like the Civil War and the approach of big business, showing how the national quest for success remade the individual ordeal of failure. Born Losers is a pioneering work of American cultural history, which connects everyday attitudes and anxieties about failure to lofty ideals of individualism and salesmanship of self. Sandage's storytelling will resonate with all of us as it brings to life forgotten men and women who wrestled with The Loser--the label and the experience--in the days when American capitalism was building a nation of winners.

Author : Kenneth L. Marcus
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139491199
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America written by Kenneth L. Marcus and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given jurisdiction over race and national origin but not religion, federal agents have had to determine whether Jewish Americans constitute a race or national origin group. They have been unable to do so. This has led to enforcement paralysis, as well as explosive internal confrontations and recriminations within the federal government. This book examines the legal and policy issues behind the ambiguity involved with civil rights protections for Jewish students. Written by a former senior government official, this book reveals the extent of this problem and presents a workable legal solution.

Author : Wilfred M. McClay
Publisher : Encounter Books
ISBN 13 : 1594037183
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why Place Matters written by Wilfred M. McClay and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary American society, with its emphasis on mobility and economic progress, all too often loses sight of the importance of a sense of “place” and community. Appreciating place is essential for building the strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life. Do we, in losing our places, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient individual identity, and for the cultivation of public virtues? For one can’t be a citizen without being a citizen of some place in particular; one isn’t a citizen of a motel. And if these dangers are real and present ones, are there ways that intelligent public policy can begin to address them constructively, by means of reasonable and democratic innovations that are likely to attract wide public support? Why Place Matters takes these concerns seriously, and its contributors seek to discover how, given the American people as they are, and American economic and social life as it now exists—and not as those things can be imagined to be in some utopian scheme—we can find means of fostering a richer and more sustaining way of life. The book is an anthology of essays exploring the contemporary problems of place and placelessness in American society. The book includes contributions from distinguished scholars and writers such as poet Dana Gioia (former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts), geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, urbanist Witold Rybczynski, architect Philip Bess, essayists Christine Rosen and Ari Schulman, philosopher Roger Scruton, transportation planner Gary Toth, and historians Russell Jacoby and Joseph Amato.

Author : Bromwell Ault
Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1463474458
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Who Lost America? written by Bromwell Ault and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2011-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bromwell Ault is an essayist and a moralist. He presents here a group of essays examining the changes and weaknesses he has seen growing in American society over the past half century. Central to his thesis is the prospect of "institutional failure" as American politics and society break down from multiple causes. One cause is population growth. Political polarization and the corrupting role of money are among the others. It is a sobering book but a valuable one. You will probably agree with much of it. You will find all of it enlightening. --- Lindsey Grant, Santa Fe, NM, 6-28-2011 The highly educated, cosmopolitan patriots who imagined and constructed the world's first truly functioning republic with its proud Rule of Law and its careful checks and balances could not have foreseen how their present day successors might abuse their accomplishments to our current dangerous level of disorder. Author Ault, a retired businessman, has dramatically traced the process by which the US has been brought to a state of moral and financial dysfunction in a new book which provides a strong wake up call to all citizens. --- Donald A. Collins, Washington, DC, author and journalist, 5-12-2011 Bromwell Ault authors a unique book from an even more profound perspective. His four score years have given him a front row seat to the rise and demise of the United States of America. Whether this civilization understands its dilemma or not, Ault clearly identifies every aspect of America's current predicament. His compelling prose connected to basic realities renders an adroit understanding of what America faces and what actions her people must take if future generations expect to enjoy viable lives in the 21st century. It's a must read for every member of Congress as well as the president. --- Frosty Wooldridge, Golden, CO, teacher, journalist and author, 5-31-2011

Author : Vivek Ramaswamy
Publisher : Hachette UK
ISBN 13 : 1546002987
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nation of Victims written by Vivek Ramaswamy and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of Woke Inc. and a 2024 presidential candidate makes the case that the essence of true American identity is to pursue excellence unapologetically and reject victimhood culture. Hardship is now equated with victimhood. Outward displays of vulnerability in defeat are celebrated over winning unabashedly. The pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism are at the heart of American identity, and the disappearance of these ideals in our country leaves a deep moral and cultural vacuum in its wake. But the solution isn’t to simply complain about it. It’s to revive a new cultural movement in America that puts excellence first again. Leaders have called Ramaswamy “the most compelling conservative voice in the country” and “one of the towering intellects in America,” and this book reveals why: he spares neither left nor right in this scathing indictment of the victimhood culture at the heart of America’s national decline. In this national bestseller, Ramaswamy explains that we’re a nation of victims now. It’s one of the few things we still have left in common—across black victims, white victims, liberal victims, and conservative victims. Victims of each other, and ultimately, of ourselves. This fearless, provocative book is for readers who dare to look in the mirror and question their most sacred assumptions about who we are and how we got here. Intricately tracing history from the fall of Rome to the rise of America, weaving Western philosophy with Eastern theology in ways that moved Jefferson and Adams centuries ago, this book describes the rise and the fall of the American experiment itself—and hopefully its reincarnation.

Author : Randall Bennett Woods
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9781139444262
Total Pages : 618 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Quest for Identity written by Randall Bennett Woods and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-07 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quest for Identity is a survey of the American experience from the close of World War II, through the Cold War and 9/11, to the present. It helps students understand postwar American history through a seamless narrative punctuated with accessible analyses. Randall Woods addresses and explains the major themes that punctuate the period: the Cold War, the Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements, and other great changes that led to major realignments of American life. While political history is emphasized, Woods also discusses in equal measure cultural matters and socio-economic problems. Dramatic new patterns of immigration and migration characterized the period as much as the counterculture, the growth of television and the Internet, the interstate highway system, rock and roll, and the exploration of space. The pageantry, drama, irony, poignancy and humor of the American journey since World War II are all here.

Author : Michael Gellert
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781944387259
Total Pages : 574 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book America's Identity Crisis written by Michael Gellert and published by . This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: his newly revised edition of The Fate of America examines the national character of the U.S. against the backdrop of history, popular culture, and media. With an updated Preface and an Appendix on the Trump phenomenon, Gellert profiles the American heroic ideal and how it expresses the nation's aspiration toward greatness and sense of identity.