Synopses & Reviews
First published in 1948,
The American Political Tradition has become one of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. The author himself called it "a young man's book," but its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past.
By writing a "kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics," Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their national experience. Like only a handful of American historians before him Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles A. Beard are examples Hofstadter was able to articulate, in a single work, a historical vision that inspired and shaped an entire generation.
Review
"[N]ow celebrating its 50th year in print....[T]he book's continued popularity may be owing as much to its philosophy as to its literary charms or the singular historiographical niche it occupies." David Greenberg, The Atlantic Monthly
Synopsis
The American Political Tradition isone of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past. By writing a "kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics," Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their national experience. Like only a handful of American historians before him Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles A. Beard are examples Hofstadter was able to articulate, in a single work, a historical vision that inspired and shaped an entire generation."
Synopsis
A revised edition of the clasic study of American politics from the Founding Fathers to FDR.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 459-492) and index.
About the Author
Richard Hofstadter, who died in October 1970, was DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. He received his B.A. from the University of Buffalo and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Among his many achievements and awards, The Age of Reform (1955) won the Pulitzer Prize in history, and Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963) received the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction, the Emerson Award of Phi Beta Kappa, and the Sidney Hillman Prize Award.
Table of Contents
Foreword vii
Preface xxv
Introduction xxxiii
1 The Founding Fathers: An Age of Realism 3
2 Thomas Jefferson: The Aristocrat as Democrat 23
3 Andrew Jackson and the Rise of Liberal Capitalism 57
4 John C. Calhoun: The Marx of the Master Class 87
5 Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth 119
6 Wendell Phillips: The Patrician as Agitator 175
7 The Spoilsmen: An Age of Cynicism 211
8 William Jennings Bryan: The Democrat as Revivalist 239
9 Theodore Roosevelt: The Conservative as Progressive 265
10 Woodrow Wilson: The Conservative as Liberal 307
11 Herbert Hoover and the Crisis of American Individualism 367
12 Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Patrician as Opportunist 409
Acknowledgments 457
Bibliographical Essay 459
Index 493