The World Turned Inside Out explores American thought and culture in the formative moment of the late twentieth century in the aftermath of the fabled Sixties. The overall argument here is that the tendencies and sensibilities we associate with that earlier moment of upheaval decisively shaped intellectual agendas and cultural practices from the all-volunteer Army to the cartoon politics of Disney movies in the 1980s and 90s. By this accounting, the so-called Reagan Revolution was not only, or even mainly, a conservative event. By the same accounting, the Left, having seized the commanding heights of higher education, was never in danger of losing the so-called culture wars. At the end of the twentieth century, the argument goes, the United States was much less conservative than it had been in 1975. The book takes supply-side economics and South Park equally seriously. It treats Freddy Krueger, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Ronald Reagan as comparable cultural icons."

This is the second book in an ongoing trilogy about the military career of a remarkable soldier and officer. The first book, “To the Last Man!” Kulbes’ Mongrels at the Chosin Reservoir, described D Company of the 10th Combat Engineers during the icy ordeal at the Chosin Reservoir and their against-all-odds withdrawal to Pusan. During the month of November 1950, 350,000 Chinese troops quietly joined forces with a nearly defeated North Korean People’s Army. On November 28, the two armies initiated a surprise counter-attack against combined South Korean, American, and United Nations’ forces so confident of victory that their northern advance had been labeled the “Home By Christmas Offensive.” The undetected build-up of forces in those snowy peaks and canyons was a remarkable military feat. Equally remarkable was the subsequent defense and evacuation from Hungnam to Pusan by the 7th and 5th Marines, to which Kulbes’ Mongrels had been temporarily attached. By the time the Mongrels arrived at Hamhung, inside the perimeter held by General Soule’s Third Division, they had suffered more than 50% casualties. Their daily reports had been lost in the chaos of battle, however, and for too long, they were not recognized for their role at the Chosin. Their status as a temporarily “lost” company, combined with their cocky attitude, created ongoing friction with headquarters. As a result, they were assigned to demolition of docks and ordnance and had to watch as units they had fought alongside debarked for the security of Pusan. In reality, that assignment was probably both a punishment for their cocky attitude as well as recognition of their notable efficiency as combat engineers. “War Dawgs” was General Soule’s nickname for the Mongrels.

William James claimed that his Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking would prove triumphant and epoch-making. Today, after more than 100 years, how is pragmatism to be understood? What has been its cultural and philosophical impact? Is it a crucial resource for current problems and for life and thought in the future? John J. Stuhr and the distinguished contributors to this multidisciplinary volume address these questions, situating them in personal, philosophical, political, American, and global contexts. Engaging James in original ways, these 11 essays probe and extend the significance of pragmatism as they focus on four major, overlapping themes: pragmatism and American culture; pragmatism as a method of thinking and settling disagreements; pragmatism as theory of truth; and pragmatism as a mood, attitude, or temperament.

This is the second book in an ongoing trilogy about the military career of a remarkable soldier and officer. The first book, “To the Last Man!” Kulbes’ Mongrels at the Chosin Reservoir, described D Company of the 10th Combat Engineers during the icy ordeal at the Chosin Reservoir and their against-all-odds withdrawal to Pusan. During the month of November 1950, 350,000 Chinese troops quietly joined forces with a nearly defeated North Korean People’s Army. On November 28, the two armies initiated a surprise counter-attack against combined South Korean, American, and United Nations’ forces so confident of victory that their northern advance had been labeled the “Home By Christmas Offensive.” The undetected build-up of forces in those snowy peaks and canyons was a remarkable military feat. Equally remarkable was the subsequent defense and evacuation from Hungnam to Pusan by the 7th and 5th Marines, to which Kulbes’ Mongrels had been temporarily attached. By the time the Mongrels arrived at Hamhung, inside the perimeter held by General Soule’s Third Division, they had suffered more than 50% casualties. Their daily reports had been lost in the chaos of battle, however, and for too long, they were not recognized for their role at the Chosin. Their status as a temporarily “lost” company, combined with their cocky attitude, created ongoing friction with headquarters. As a result, they were assigned to demolition of docks and ordnance and had to watch as units they had fought alongside debarked for the security of Pusan. In reality, that assignment was probably both a punishment for their cocky attitude as well as recognition of their notable efficiency as combat engineers. “War Dawgs” was General Soule’s nickname for the Mongrels.

Contents:
Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Modern Subjectivity and consumer culture 2. Fighting the war of position: The Politics of Pragmatism 3. The strange career of Social Self 4. Narrative Politics: Richard Porty at the end of the Reform 5. Hamlet, James, and the Women Questions 6. Unstiffening Our Theories: Pragmatism, Feminism, and the end of Capitalism.

At the turn of the century, a battery of new intellectual and cultural currents came together to reorient society - Progressivism, Pragmatism, feminism, labour activism, and consumer culture. In this work, Livingston reads philosophers like John Dewey alongside activists like Jane Addams and finds in their ideas a similar and novel sense of the individual's place in the world. By drawing new connections between these developments, Livingston re-channels discussion on the coming of modernity.

The rise of corporate capitalism was a cultural revolution as well as an economic event, according to James Livingston. That revolution resides, he argues, in the fundamental reconstruction of selfhood, or subjectivity, that attends the advent of an "age of surplus" under corporate auspices. From this standpoint, consumer culture represents a transition to a society in which identities as well as incomes are not necessarily derived from the possession of productive labor or property. From the same perspective, pragmatism and literary naturalism become ways of accommodating the new forms of solidarity and subjectivity enabled by the emergence of corporate capitalism. So conceived, demonstrates Livingston, they become ways of articulating alternatives to modern, possessive individualism. Livingston argues accordingly that the flight from pragmatism led by Lewis Mumford was an attempt to refurbish a romantic version of modern, possessive individualism. This attempt still shapes our reading of pragmatism, Livingston claims, and will continue to do so until we understand that William James was not merely a well-meaning middleman between Charles Peirce and John Dewey and that James's pragmatism was both a working model of postmodern subjectivity and a novel critique of capitalism.

The rise of corporate capitalism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries has long been a source of lively debate among historians. In Origins of the Federal Reserve System, James Livingston approaches this controversial topic from a fresh perspective, asking how, during this era, a "new order of corporation men" made itself the preeminent source of knowledge on all significant economic issues and thereby changed the character of public and political discourse in the United States. The book seeks to uncover the roots of the Federal Reserve System and to explain the awakening and articulation of class consciousness among America's urban elite, two phenomena that its author sees as inseparable. According to Livingston, the movement for banking and monetary reform that led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System played an important role in the general transition from entrepreneurial to corporate capitalism: it was during this struggle for reform that a group of business leaders first emerged as a new corporate social class. This interdisciplinary account of the social, cultural, and intellectual Origins of the Federal Reserve System offers both a discussion of the sources of modern public policy and a persuasive study of upper-class formation in the United States. The book will interest a wide audience of historians, economists, political scientists, sociologists, and others who wish to understand the rise of America's corporate elite, the class that has played a large-if not dominant-role in 20thcentury America.

For centuries we've believed that work was where you learned discipline, initiative, honesty, self-reliance-in a word, character. A job was also, and not incidentally, the source of your income: if you didn't work, you didn't eat, or else you were stealing from someone. If only you worked hard, you could earn your way and maybe even make something of yourself. In recent decades, through everyday experience, these beliefs have proven spectacularly false. In this book, James Livingston explains how and why Americans still cling to work as a solution rather than a problem -why it is that both liberals and conservatives announce that "full employment" is their goal when job creation is no longer a feasible solution for any problem, moral or economic. The result is a witty, stirring denunciation of the ways we think about why we labor, exhorting us to imagine a new way of finding meaning, character, and sustenance beyond our workaday world-and showingus that we can afford to leave that world behind.

The World Turned Inside Out explores American thought and culture in the formative moment of the late twentieth century in the aftermath of the fabled Sixties. The overall argument here is that the tendencies and sensibilities we associate with that earlier moment of upheaval decisively shaped intellectual agendas and cultural practices-from the all-volunteer Army to the cartoon politics of Disney movies-in the 1980s and 90s. By this accounting, the so-called Reagan Revolution was not only, or even mainly, a conservative event. By the same accounting, the Left, having seized the commanding heights of higher education, was never in danger of losing the so-called culture wars. At the end of the twentieth century, the argument goes, the United States was much less conservative than it had been in 1975. The book takes supply-side economics and South Park equally seriously. It treats Freddy Krueger, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Ronald Reagan as comparable cultural icons.