The American history of the 'city on a hill' metaphor from its Puritan beginnings to its role in Reagan's American civil religion and beyond.

A fresh, original history of America's national narratives, told through the loss, recovery, and rise of one influential Puritan sermon from 1630 to the present day In this illuminating book, Abram C. Van Engen shows how the phrase "city on a hill," from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, shaped the story of American exceptionalism in the twentieth century. By tracing the history of Winthrop's speech, its changing status through time, and its use in modern politics, Van Engen asks us to reevaluate our national narratives. He tells the story of curators, librarians, collectors, archivists, antiquarians, and other often anonymous figures who emphasized the role of the Pilgrims and Puritans in American history, paving the way for the saving and sanctifying of a single sermon and its eventual transformation into an American tale. This sermon's rags-to-riches rise reveals the way national stories take shape and shows us how they continue to influence competing visions of the country--the many different meanings of America that emerge from its literary past.

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill," John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630. More than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop's long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American identity and exceptionalism? In As a City on a Hill, leading American intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers tells the surprising story of one of the most celebrated documents in the canon of the American idea. In doing so, he brings to life the ideas Winthrop's text carried in its own time and the sharply different yearnings that have been attributed to it since. As a City on a Hill shows how much more malleable, more saturated with vulnerability, and less distinctly American Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity" was than the document that twentieth-century Americans invented. Across almost four centuries, Rodgers traces striking shifts in the meaning of Winthrop's words--from Winthrop's own anxious reckoning with the scrutiny of the world, through Abraham Lincoln's haunting reference to this "almost chosen people," to the "city on a hill" that African Americans hoped to construct in Liberia, to the era of Donald Trump. As a City on a Hill reveals the circuitous, unexpected ways Winthrop's words came to lodge in American consciousness. At the same time, the book offers a probing reflection on how nationalism encourages the invention of "timeless" texts to straighten out the crooked realities of the past.

An account of Boston's planning history. Nine chapters detail the key developments that shaped each period of Boston's growth, focusing on the post-World War II era. The text describes the process and significance of all the major projects - from the first wharves to the latest skyscrapers.

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, University of Duisburg-Essen, language: English, abstract: This research paper deals on the historical and cultural background of the 17th Century and will be focused on the literary work “The Scarlet Letter”. Today, topics like gender equality and feminism are so important and up-to-date that one cannot be uninformed. Everyone has an opinion and no one is afraid to speak openly about it anymore. They are free to say, write and think what they believe is right. They are able to vote and go to work. They can use any social media platform and tweet or post their views and experiences and get some attention. This was not the case a few centuries back. Women were oppressed and not able to speak their minds. Women had to fight for their rights to be acknowledged, which has enabled us to be in the position that we are in now. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a literary work that has academic value and is often classified as required reading in classes. It was published 1850 and tells the story of a woman in Puritan times who has to face the consequences of committing adultery. The novel represents the Puritan society and the way women were treated in that time. It gives attention on the ideology and gives many details in which today’s readers can imagine the struggle of obedience to the system.