New Books In American Studies

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a sweeping examination of the key ideas that have infused American society. Moving across borders, time, and within American culture the author gives a well-written and spirited account of why ideas matter. Beginning with how the name “America” came to be in the mind of European empires in the sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century when globalization, another form of empire, was on the minds of Americans. Along the way Ratner-Rosenhagen, offers a tour through early European contact with native people, the American Enlightenment, the romance with the new republic, the remaking of the nation through the transcendentalist movement, scientific discoveries, pragmatism and modernism to the intellectual, social and political ruptures of the late twentieth centuries that owe a great deal to what came before. This bird’s eye view captures the significance of attending to ideas that motivated Ame