In the first comprehensive reading of dozens of American literary and social culture classics, Tom Cronin, one of America’s most astute students of the American political tradition, tells the story of the American political experiment through the eyes of forty major novelists, from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Hunter S. Thompson. They have been moral and civic consciousness-raisers as we have navigated the zigs and zags, the successes and setbacks, and the slow awkward evolution of the American political experiment. Constitutional democracy, equal justice for all, the American Dream, and American Exceptionalism are all part of our country’s narrative. But, as Imagining a Great Republic explains, there has never been just a single American narrative—we have competing stories, just as we have competing American Dreams and competing ways of imagining a more perfect political union. Recognizing and understanding these competing values is a key part of being American. Cronin’s book explains how this is possible and why we should all be proud to be American.

Ancient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination, edited by Wyger Velema and Arthur Weststeijn, approaches the early modern republican political imagination from a fresh perspective. While most scholars agree on the importance of the classical world to early modern republican theorists, its role is all too often described in rather abstract and general terms such as “classical republicanism” or the “neo-roman theory of free states”. The contributions to this volume propose a different approach and all focus on the specific ways in which ancient republics such as Rome, Athens, Sparta, and the Hebrew Republic served as models for early modern republican thought. The result is a novel interpretation of the impact of antiquity on early modern republicanism.

Why has "America" - that is, the United States of America - become so much more than simply a place in the imagination of so many people around the world? In both Europe and Latin America, the United States has often been a site of multiple possible futures, a screen onto which could be projected utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares. Whether castigated as a threat to civilized order or championed as a promise of earthly paradise, America has invariably been treated as a cipher for modernity. It has functioned as an inescapable reference point for both European and Latin American societies, not only as a model of social and political organization - one to reject as much one to emulate - but also as the prime example of a society emerging from a dramatic diversity of cultural and social backgrounds.

In such popular television series as The West Wing and 24, in thrillers like Tom Clancy’s novels, and in recent films, plays, graphic novels, and internet cartoons, America has been led by an amazing variety of chief executives. Some of these are real presidents who have been fictionally reimagined. Others are “might-have-beens” like Philip Roth’s President Charles Lindbergh. Many more have never existed except in some storyteller’s mind. In The Presidents We Imagine, Jeff Smith examines the presidency’s ever-changing place in the American imagination. Ranging across different media and analyzing works of many kinds, some familiar and some never before studied, he explores the evolution of presidential fictions, their central themes, the impact on them of new and emerging media, and their largely unexamined role in the nation’s real politics. Smith traces fictions of the presidency from the plays and polemics of the eighteenth century—when the new office was born in what Alexander Hamilton called “the regions of fiction”—to the digital products of the twenty-first century, with their seemingly limitless user-defined ways of imagining the world’s most important political figure. Students of American culture and politics, as well as readers interested in political fiction and film, will find here a colorful, indispensable guide to the many surprising ways Americans have been “representing” presidents even as those presidents have represented them. “Especially timely in an era when media image-mongering increasingly shapes presidential politics.”—Paul S. Boyer, series editor “Smith's understanding of the sociopolitical realities of US history is impressive; likewise his interpretations of works of literature and popular culture. . . .In addition to presenting thoughtful analysis, the book is also fun. Readers will enjoy encounters with, for example, The Beggar's Opera, Duck Soup, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, Philip Roth's Plot against America, the comedic campaigns of W. C. Fields for President and Pogo for President, and presidential fictions that continue up to the last President Bush. . . . His writing is fluid and conversational, but every page reveals deep understanding and focus. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.”—CHOICE

Spruyt takes an inter-disciplinary approach to explain how collective belief systems organized three non-European societies c.1500-1900, and how these polities engaged the European colonial powers.

The abolitionists of the mid-nineteenth century have long been painted in extremes--vilified as reckless zealots who provoked the catastrophic bloodletting of the Civil War, or praised as daring and courageous reformers who hastened the end of slavery. But Andrew Delbanco sees abolitionists in a different light, as the embodiment of a driving force in American history: the recurrent impulse of an adamant minority to rid the world of outrageous evil. Delbanco imparts to the reader a sense of what it meant to be a thoughtful citizen in nineteenth-century America, appalled by slavery yet aware of the fragility of the republic and the high cost of radical action. In this light, we can better understand why the fiery vision of the "abolitionist imagination" alarmed such contemporary witnesses as Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne even as they sympathized with the cause. The story of the abolitionists thus becomes both a stirring tale of moral fervor and a cautionary tale of ideological certitude. And it raises the question of when the demand for purifying action is cogent and honorable, and when it is fanatic and irresponsible. Delbanco's work is placed in conversation with responses from literary scholars and historians. These provocative essays bring the past into urgent dialogue with the present, dissecting the power and legacies of a determined movement to bring America's reality into conformity with American ideals.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1871.

This book works equally well in the following multiple fields: Gender Studies, Literary/Cultural Studies, Performance Studies, Asian and Pacific Studies, Chinese Studies, Critical Theory and Literary Historiography

When it comes to the most controversial moral questions of our lives - abortion, euthanasia, suicide, capital punishment, racial justice, and affirmative action - there is a right and wrong, but no one owns the truth. This book guides us through the opposing arguments on these profound issues, opening up ways for our pluralistic society to think about them. How does one make up one's mind about the difficult, yet everyday, inescapable social and moral problems we all face? The public debate often degenerates into name-calling and even violence. Conservatives and liberals alike act as if there is only one way to think. In a format that is accessible, anecdotal, and concrete, Edward Tivnan lays out the best arguments on all sides of these visceral topics. He explores the most sophisticated thinking from philosophy, theology, medicine, and the law, as well as examples from the emotional complexities of everyday life, and carefully mediates between opposing ideals - not to lead us to a position of convenience, but to help us toward independent decisions of conviction. Tivnan's analysis, therefore, does not dictate answers, but calls for an effort to understand and respect why people believe so strongly in their own values. Only by facing up to our differences of opinion can we make progress, expand our moral imagination, and achieve a decent and respectful society. In concluding chapters, Tivnan describes the peculiar nature of American democracy, invented by men who knew that freedom would breed conflicting values and expected that such differences would secure the nation's future as a republican democracy. The first premise of a decent, free society, Tivnan writes, is tolerance; "the first sparks of tolerance and decency reside in the imagination - what I want to call the moral imagination." He concludes that expanding our moral imagination "will cleanse debate of hatred and moral arrogance."

In this book, Eva Brann sets out no less a task than to assess the meaning of imagination in its multifarious expressions throughout western history. The result is one of those rare achievements that will make The World of the Imagination a standard reference.