| American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason Contributor(s): Winterer, Caroline (Author) |
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ISBN: 0300240260 ISBN-13: 9780300240269 Publisher: Yale University Press OUR PRICE: $29.65 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2018 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - Revolutionary Period (1775-1800) - History | Social History - History | Historiography |
| Dewey: 973.25 |
| Series: The Lewis Walpole Eighteenth-Century Culture and History |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 5.7" W x 8.9" (1.05 lbs) 368 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Chronological Period - 18th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: A provocative reassessment of the concept of an American golden age of European-born reason and intellectual curiosity in the years following the Revolutionary War The accepted myth of the "American Enlightenment" suggests that the rejection of monarchy and establishment of a new republic in the United States in the eighteenth century was the realization of utopian philosophies born in the intellectual salons of Europe and radiating outward to the New World. In this revelatory work, Stanford historian Caroline Winterer argues that a national mythology of a unitary, patriotic era of enlightenment in America was created during the Cold War to act as a shield against the threat of totalitarianism, and that Americans followed many paths toward political, religious, scientific, and artistic enlightenment in the 1700s that were influenced by European models in more complex ways than commonly thought. Winterer's book strips away our modern inventions of the American national past, exploring which of our ideas and ideals are truly rooted in the eighteenth century and which are inventions and mystifications of more recent times. |