H. Lark Hall presents the first comprehensive biography of Vernon Louis Parrington (1871-1929). The recipient of the 1928 Pulitzer Prize in history for the first two volumes of his Main Currents in American Thought, Parrington remains one of the most influential literary and historical scholars of the early twentieth century.Parrington was a man in search of a personal myth. He found his self-image successively mirrored in Victorian novels, painting, poetry, populism, religion, the arts and crafts movement, American literature, and American history. These changes were also reflected in his teaching as a professor of English - at the College of Emporia, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Washington. Published late in his career, the two volumes of Main Currents represented the culmination of his search.Drawing upon his personal papers - including correspondence, diaries, and student course work, Main Currents chapter drafts, and other unpublished writings - Hall traces Parrington's intellectual development from his Midwestern childhood through his mid-life engagement with English poet and artist William Morris, then from the radical impact of "the new history" to the tempered post World War One reflection of his career at the University of Washington. Hall's reinterpretation of Main Currents emphasizes Parrington's concern with the drama of the life of the mind and links his historical viewpoint to his own personal history.

"Enduring Liberalism pursues two objectives. One, it explores the political thought of public intellectuals and the general public since the 1960s. Two, it assesses contemporary and classic interpretations of American political thought in light of the study's findings."--BOOK JACKET.

Concisely written and compelling, this book offers a provocative look at European-American relations. It focuses on the tradition of common political ideas, the original roots of common European and American thought, the decision by the two continents not to develop in isolation from one another, and the traditional ambivalence of the European caught indecisively between reliance upon and distance from the United States. From classical antiquity to contemporary society, Mathiopoulos unfolds the paradoxical relationship between the U.S. and Europe--the simultaneous occurrence of reciprocal attraction and mutual misunderstanding. She describes how America was born of European intellectual stock; enlightenment, reason, (religious) freedom, equality, democracy, the rights of man and the desire to achieve these things in the New World. She also tells us that the idealism of progress of the European enlightenment gave rise to the American Dream which constitutes the consciousness of the American people and is woven into their domestic and foreign policy to this day. This stimulating book will interest anyone involved in the field of comparative political thought as well as those interested in the evolutionary and revolutionary process of the idea of progress in Europe and the United States. The idea of progress forms the core History and Progress. Mathiopoulos shows that faith in progress and the desire for a better world have been the major stimuli for historical change in the modern world. She describes how Europe gave birth to this idea and throughout history became largely disenchanted with it. In contrast, the United States inherited this concept and has utilized it for over 200 years to maintain its sense of identity and self-awareness. History and Progress explains not only how the idea of progress inspired the founding of America, but how the concept provides momentum for the historical development of the nation to the present. In short, the 'American Dream' preserved the progressive optimism projected by the Enlightenment in the United States, even when it had since disappeared from European historical thought.

This collection of the letters of one of the great literary figures of the 20th century includes exchanges with more than 100 correspondents, among them Saul Bellow, Malcolm Cowley, Charles Johnson, Bernard Malamud, and William Carlos Williams. During his tenure at the University of Washington from 1948 to 1975, Heilman transformed the English Department into a national center for poetry, exhibited courage in defending academic freedom during the McCarthy Era, and struggled with the volatile campus politics of the 1960s.