Originally published in 1997 and now back in print, Making the
American Self by Daniel Walker Howe, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
author of What Hath God Wrought, charts the genesis and fascinating
trajectory of a central idea in American history.
One of the most precious liberties Americans have always cherished
is the ability to "make something of themselves"--to choose not
only an occupation but an identity. Examining works by Benjamin
Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass,
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and
others, Howe investigates how Americans in the 18th and 19th
centuries engaged in the process of "self-construction,"
"self-improvement," and the "pursuit of happiness." He explores as
well how Americans understood individual identity in relation to
the larger body politic, and argues that the conscious construction
of the autonomous self was in fact essential to American
democracy--that it both shaped and was in turn shaped by American
democratic institutions. "The thinkers described in this book,"
Howe writes, "believed that, to the extent individuals exercised
self-control, they were making free institutions--liberal,
republican, and democratic--possible." And as the scope of American
democracy widened so too did the practice of self-construction,
moving beyond the preserve of elite white males to potentially all
Americans. Howe concludes that the time has come to ground our
democracy once again in habits of personal responsibility,
civility, and self-discipline esteemed by some of America's most
important thinkers.
Erudite, beautifully written, and more pertinent than ever as we
enter a new era of individual and governmental responsibility,
Making the American Self illuminates an impulse at the very heart
of the American experience.
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