American Beliefs - What Keeps a Big Country and a Diverse People United (Hardcover)

George Washington said that America's future depends on the unity of its people and, casting a transatlantic eye upon the undignified presidential spat in Florida, one cannot help but note how fragile that unity may indeed be. McElroy's book is billed as an antidote to past examinations of divisions in US society, and embarks on an explicit mission to identify deep-seated values that unify this vast, dynamic and diverse nation. But lurking beneath its surface is a thinly veiled nervousness about 'cultural decline' that seeks to revive values eroded by excessive liberalism: the author bemoans, for example, how the idea of multiculturalism has displaced 'American national culture'. In this sense, this book becomes and important artefact, a resuscitation of the studies in 'national character' once proclaimed extinct. McElroy traces with skill the erudition and evolution of such recognizable American beliefs as the uncompromising work ethic, visionary enterprise, individual responsibility and a genuine popular sovereignity. He devotes considerable effort to arguing for the differences between American and imported English values and the former's separate, almost timeless, evolution derived as if from the very landscape itself. He also examines the residual belief in America as a chosen land with a civilizing mission sanctioned by God. Such ideas recur in cultural nationalism the world over. This book will prove valuable, and often provocative, to readers interested in US perpectives on its own culture at the dawn of the 21st century. (Kirkus UK)

Why do so many different people with widely dissimilar ideas and customs get along as Americans? In American Beliefs, John McElroy identifies and explains those essential ideas that keep a big country and a diverse people united, tracing them historically from their origins in the earliest experiences of the American colonists. A powerful antidote to decades of concentration on the differences among Americans. A magnificent and timely book. John McElroy picks up where de Tocqueville left off. Charles Moskos.

General

Imprint:	Ivan R. Dee
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	March 1999
First published:	February 1999
Authors:	John Harmon McElroy
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 26mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	288
ISBN-13:	978-1-56663-231-7
Categories:	Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Area / regional studies > General Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies > History of ideas, intellectual history Promotions
LSN:	1-56663-231-5
Barcode:	9781566632317

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