Who Would Have Thought?

Abstract

Who Would Have Thought? Bruce Kuklick* (bio) Lewis Perry, ed., American Thought and Culture Series: E. Brooks Holifield. Era of Persuasion: American Thought and Culture, 1521–1680. Boston: Twayne, 1989; Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 224pp. Chronology, notes and references, bibliographic essay, and index. $111.00 (cloth); $37.00 (paper); $35.99 (e-book). Ned C. Landsman. From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680–1760. Boston: Twayne, 1997; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. 240pp. Illustrations, chronology, notes and references, bibliographic essay, and index. $23.95. Robert E. Shalhope. The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760–1800. Boston: Twayne 1990; Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. xvii + 190 pp. Chronology, notes and references, bibliographic essay, and index. $97.00 (cloth); $34.00 (paper); $32.99 (e-book). Jean V. Matthews. Toward a New Society: American Thought and Culture, 1800–1830. Boston: Twayne, 1990. 188pp. (Out of print.) Anne C. Rose. Voices of the Marketplace: American Thought and Culture, 1830–1860. Boston: Twayne, 1995; Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 276pp. Illustrations, chronology, notes and references, bibliographic essay, and index. $101.00 (cloth); $44.00 (paper). Louise L. Stevenson. The Victorian Homefront: American Thought and Culture, 1860–1880. Boston: Twayne 1991; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001. 272pp. Illustrations, chronology, notes and references, and index. $29.95. [End Page 571] George Cotkin. Reluctant Modernism: American Thought and Culture, 1880–1900. Boston: Twayne, 1992; Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 204pp. Chronology, notes and references, bibliographic essay, and index. $111.00 (cloth); $42.00 (paper); $40.99 (e-book). Daniel H. Borus. Twentieth-Century Multiplicity: American Thought and Culture, 1900–1920. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009. 328pp. Chronology, bibliographic essay, and index. $88.00 (cloth); $33.00 (paper); $27.99 (e-book). Paul V. Murphy. The New Era: American Thought and Culture in the 1920s. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. 282pp. Chronology, notes, bibliographic essay, and index. $88.00 (cloth); $79.99 (e-book). Terry A. Cooney. Balancing Acts: American Thought and Culture in the 1930s. Boston: Twayne, 1995. 288pp. (Out of print.) William Graebner. The Age of Doubt: American Thought and Culture in the 1940s. Boston: Twayne, 1991; Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1998. 192pp. Chronology, notes and references, bibliographic essay, and index. (Out of print.) Casey N. Blake, Daniel H. Borus, and Howard Brick. At the Center: American Thought and Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century, 1948–1963 (forthcoming). Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. Illustrations, notes, and index. Howard Brick. Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s. Boston: Twayne, 1998; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell, 2000. 272pp. Illustrations, chronology, notes and references, bibliographic essay, and index. $24.95. J. David Hoeveler Jr. The Postmodernist Turn: American Thought and Culture in the 1970s. Boston: Twayne, 1996; Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 248pp. Ilustrations, chronology, bibliographic essay, notes and references, and index. $111.00 (cloth); $42.00 (paper); $40.99 (e-book). James Livingston. The World Turned Inside Out: American Thought and Culture at the End of the Twentieth Century. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. 226pp. Appendix, bibliographic essay, and index. $50.00 (cloth); $28.00 (paper); $27.99 (e-book). [End Page 572] Intellectual historian Lewis Perry largely conceived and administratively executed this fifteen-volume American Thought and Culture series. It is an impressive achievement. Taken on their own terms, the works display Perry’s generous understanding of “intellectual and cultural” history and his ability to select talented specialists for each volume. Collectively, the books competently review the sweep of the intellectual and cultural from the sixteenth century through the twentieth. The authors display with some professional éclat how this genre of American history came of age over the last forty years. While the books are impeccable in their up-to-date scholarship, they were designed for use by undergraduates. The actual texts of most of them are brief, with separate chronologies and helpful but not overwhelming bibliographies. Perry seems initially to have encouraged the authors to contribute their own original investigations to the surveys; at least the citations in the first couple of volumes demonstrate reading in the archives. For most of the authors, however, the research base is the secondary literature and, for the “intellectual...