Ideas in America's Cultures: From Republic to Mass Society - Hardcover

Ideas in America's Cultures: From Republic to Mass Society offers new perspectives on American intellectual and cultural history in eight original essays. The contributors [Roger Fechner, Howard A. Barnes, Carroll Engelhardt, Clifford H. Scott, Mary Kelley, Bruce Curtis, Joy Curtis, Thomas J. Schlereth, Dale R. Vlasek, and Harold B. Wohl] use the methods of intellectual and cultural historians to examine many topics that the new social historians have dramatized in the past two decades, pointing toward an enrichment of both enterprises. The contributors write about such problems as the character and sources of the American Revolutionary ideology, the dilemmas of leadership in democratic mass society, and the role of public schools as agents of ideological conformity. They examine the relative influence of the ideologies of traditional Christianity and modern science, the conflicts of nbineteenth century women between their domestic responsibilites and their occupational commitments beyond the home, and the ability of professional and business elites to mange reform in the Progressive era. They also analyze the anguish of black intellectuals who attempted to fashion a realistic program of assimilation for their people within an essentially hostile white society.