Michael Kammen – författare

THIS READER WILL PROVIDE A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE CREATING AND SHAPING OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION. KAMMEN WILL TELL THE STORY OF THE CONSTITU- TION THROUGH THE DOCUMENTS THAT INFLUENCED AND INTERPRETED IT; THE POLITICAL PAMPHLETS, WHERE MANY OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES WERE FIRST ADDRESSED, THE WRITINGS OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND THE WRITTEN RECORDS OF VARIOUS DEBATES. THIS READER WILL INCLUDE SELECTIONS FROM "THE FEDERALIST PAPERS, THE ANTI- FEDERALIST PAPERS", MADISON'S NOTES ON THE PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION OF 1787, DEBATES IB STATE RATIFYING CONVENTIONS AS WELL AS CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN MADISON, JEFFERSON, ADAMS AND OTHERS AT THE TIME OF THE DRAFTING AND IN REFLECTION YEARS LATER.

He was a friend of James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, e.e. cummings, John Dos Passos, Irving Berlin, and F. Scott Fitzgerald--and the enemy of Ezra Pound, H.L. Mencken, and Ernest Hemingway. He was so influential a critic that Edmund Wilson declared that he had played a leading role in the "liquidation of genteel culture in America." Yet today many students of American culture would not recognize his name. He was Gilbert Seldes, and in this brilliant biographical study,Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen recreates a singularly American life of letters. Equally important, Kammen uses Seldes's life as a lens through which to bring into sharp focus thedramatic shifts in American culture that occurred in the half-century after World War I.Born in 1893, Seldes saw in his lifetime an astonishing series of innovations in popular and mass culture: silent films and talkies, the phonograph and the radio, the coming of television, and the proliferation of journalism aimed at mainstream America in such venues as Vanity Fair, The Saturday Evening Post, and Esquire. (His monthly column in Esquire was called"The Lively Arts.") Seldes was more than a witness to these changes, however; he was the leading champion of popular culture in his time, and a skilled practitioner as well. Kammen, the first scholar to enjoy access to Seldes'sunpublished papers, illuminates his immense influence as the earliest cultural critic to insist that the lively arts--vaudeville, musical revues, film, jazz, and the comics--should be taken just as seriously as grand opera, the legitimate theatre, and other manifestations of high culture.As he traces Seldes's remarkable evolution from an acknowledged aesthete and highbrow to a cultural democrat with a passion for the popular arts, Kammen recaptures the critic's prescience, wit, andgenerosity for a newly expanded audience. We witness Seldes's triumphs and travails as managing editor of The Dial, the most influential literary magazine of its time, and read of New York's endlesslyfeuding publications and literary rivalries. Kammen offers wonderfully detailed accounts of The Dial's introduction of "The Wasteland" in its November 1922 issue; Seldes's review of Ulysses for The Nation, one of the first (if not the very first) to appear in the U.S.; and the complete story of the writing, publication, and critical reception of The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes's most influential book. And Kammen also covers Seldes's astonishingly versatilelater career as a freelance writer (on every conceivable subject), historian, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, radio scriptwriter, the first program director for CBS Television, and the founding dean of the Annenberg School of Communicationsat the University of Pennsylvania.One of popular culture's earliest and most eloquent champions, Seldes was nonetheless publicly worried as early as 1937 that the popularity of radio, film, and television would mean the demise of the "private art of reading." By 1957 he was warning that "with the shift of all entertainment into the area of big business, we are being engulfed into a mass-produced mediocrity." At a time when many thoughtful Americans despair of popular culture,The Lively Arts revisits the opening salvos in the ongoing debate over "democratization" versus "dumbing down" of the arts. It offers a penetrating and timely analysis of Gilbert Seldes's pioneeringconviction that the popular and the great arts must not only co-exist but enrich one another if we are to realize the innovation and intensity of American culture at its best.

Today, New York stands as the stronghold of American culture, business, and idealism. Its size, influence, and multicultural design mark it as the corner-stone of our country. The rich and varied history of early New York would seem to present a fertile topic for investigation to those interested colonial America. Yet, there has never been a modern history of old New York, until this lively and detailed account by Michael Kammen. Elegantly written and comprehensive in scope, Colonial New York includes all of the political, social, economic, cultural, and religious aspects of New York's formative centuries. Social and ethnic diversity have always been characteristic of New York, and this was never so evident as in its early years. This period provides the contemporary reader with a backward glance at what the United States would become in the twentieth century. Colonial New York stood as a precursor of American society and culture as a whole: a broad model of the American experience we enjoy today.Kammen's history is enlivened by a look at some of the larger-than-life personalities who had tremendous impact on the many social and political adjustments necessary to the colony's continued growth. Here we meet Peter Stuyvesant, director of New Amsterdam and an executive of the West India Company: a man facing the innumerable difficulties of governing a large, sprawling town divided by Dutch, English, and Indian settlements. Ultimately, history would view him as a failure, but his strong, Calvinist approach left such an indelible stamp on the burgeoning colony that readers will be tempted to do a little revisionist thinking of his tenure. Looking at a later governor, Lord Cornbury, gives us the exact opposite example of a man despised by his contemporaries as the most venal of all the colonial governors (he was an occasional public cross-dresser, wearing the clothes of his distant cousin, Queen Anne), but who successfully guided the colony through a transition to Anglican rule. The book culminates in chapters that investigate New York's strategic role in the bloody French and Indian War, and the key part it played in the economic protests and political conflict that finally led to American independence. The intricate and tangled web of alliances, loyalties, and shifting political ground that underlies much of colonial New York's past has clearly daunted many historians from taking on the task of writing an understandable account. Michael Kammen has excepted this challenge and gives us much more than a mere chronicle. Rather, he paints a compelling portrait of colonial life as it truly was. Although this important book is thorough and informed by primary sources, Colonial New York's clear and vivid prose offer a delightful narrative that will entertain both general readers and serious scholars alike. It pays special attention to localities and contains numerous illustrations that are attentive to the decorative arts and the material culture of early New York. Surprising and enlightening, Colonial New York is a delight to read and provides new perspectives on our nation's beginnings. The book traces significant changes in twentieth-century American culture through the career of Gilbert Seldes. It was Seldes' book The Seven Lively Arts that produced a wide debate among intellectuals about the so-called "popular arts" (film, broadcasting, cartoons) and their importance to American culture.

He was a friend of James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, e.e. cummings, John Dos Passos, Irving Berlin, and F. Scott Fitzgerald--and the enemy of Ezra Pound, H.L. Mencken, and Ernest Hemingway. He was so influential a critic that Edmund Wilson declared that he had played a leading role in the "liquidation of genteel culture in America." Yet today many students of American culture would not recognize his name. He was Gilbert Seldes, and in this brilliant biographical study, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen recreates a singularly American life of letters. Equally important, Kammen uses Seldes''s life as a lens through which to bring into sharp focus the dramatic shifts in American culture that occurred in the half-century after World War I. Born in 1893, Seldes saw in his lifetime an astonishing series of innovations in popular and mass culture: silent films and talkies, the phonograph and the radio, the coming of television, and the proliferation of journalism aimed at mainstream America in such venues as Vanity Fair, The Saturday Evening Post, and Esquire. (His monthly column in Esquire was called "The Lively Arts.") Seldes was more than a witness to these changes, however; he was the leading champion of popular culture in his time, and a skilled practitioner as well. Kammen, the first scholar to enjoy access to Seldes''s unpublished papers, illuminates his immense influence as the earliest cultural critic to insist that the lively arts--vaudeville, musical revues, film, jazz, and the comics--should be taken just as seriously as grand opera, the legitimate theatre, and other manifestations of high culture. As he traces Seldes''s remarkable evolution from an acknowledged aesthete and highbrow to a cultural democrat with a passion for the popular arts, Kammen recaptures the critic''s prescience, wit, and generosity for a newly expanded audience. We witness Seldes''s triumphs and travails as managing editor of The Dial, the most influential literary magazine of its time, and read of New York''s endlessly feuding publications and literary rivalries. Kammen offers wonderfully detailed accounts of The Dial''s introduction of "The Wasteland" in its November 1922 issue; Seldes''s review of Ulysses for The Nation, one of the first (if not the very first) to appear in the U.S.; and the complete story of the writing, publication, and critical reception of The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes''s most influential book. And Kammen also covers Seldes''s astonishingly versatile later career as a freelance writer (on every conceivable subject), historian, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, radio scriptwriter, the first program director for CBS Television, and the founding dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. One of popular culture''s earliest and most eloquent champions, Seldes was nonetheless publicly worried as early as 1937 that the popularity of radio, film, and television would mean the demise of the "private art of reading." By 1957 he was warning that "with the shift of all entertainment into the area of big business, we are being engulfed into a mass-produced mediocrity." At a time when many thoughtful Americans despair of popular culture, The Lively Arts revisits the opening salvos in the ongoing debate over "democratization" versus "dumbing down" of the arts. It offers a penetrating and timely analysis of Gilbert Seldes''s pioneering conviction that the popular and the great arts must not only co-exist but enrich one another if we are to realize the innovation and intensity of American culture at its best.

Michael Kammen is widely regarded as one of our most important--and most diversely talented--cultural historians. David Brion Davis has said, "No other historian of [his] generation has such a broad and concrete grasp of ''American culture'' in all its manifestations, from constitutional law to formal painting and popular culture." This engaging volume stands as rich and compelling evidence of that assertion. In the Past Lane collects writings from a span of more than ten years, covering the broad spectrum of Kammen''s recent interests. Essay topics include the role of the historian, the relationship between culture and the State, uses of tradition in American commercial culture, American historical art, memory distortion in American history, the contested uses of history in American education, and others. The book will be seen as an important contribution to Kammen''s wide-ranging scholarship--and to American cultural history proper."For professional historians or serious students of history, Kammen''s essays provide an excellent opportunity to gauge how those who chronicle our past both influence and are influenced by national and personal experiences."--Booklist

With "Digging Up the Dead", Pulitzer Prize - winning historian Michael Kammen reveals a treasure trove of fascinating, surprising, and occasionally gruesome stories of exhumation and reburial throughout American history. Taking us to the contested grave sites of such figures as Sitting Bull, John Paul Jones, Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Boone, Jefferson Davis, and even Abraham Lincoln, Kammen explores how complicated interactions of regional pride, shifting reputations, and evolving burial practices led to public and often emotional battles over the final resting places of famous figures. Grave-robbing, skull-fondling, cases of mistaken identity, and the financial lures of cemetery tourism all come into play as Kammen delves deeply into this little-known - yet surprisingly persistent - aspect of American history. Simultaneously insightful and interesting, masterly and macabre, "Digging Up the Dead" reminds us that the stories of American history don't always end when the key players pass on. Rather, the battle - over reputations, interpretations, and, last but far from least, possession of the remains themselves - is often just beginning.

"History painting," for many people, conjures up Washington Crossing the Delaware and other paintings of heroic historical events. But history has made its way into considerably more American art than such obvious examples, in the view of Michael Kammen. In three thought-provoking and innovative essays, Kammen ranges from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, from central Europe to the western United States, and from elegant oil painting to folk sculpture to show the transformations of Old World icons of time into New World images of social memory and tradition.In the first essay, Kammen demonstrates how American artists and artisans modified European emblems of time in response to their New World setting. In the second essay concerning nineteenth-century landscape art, he explores how artists used space to represent the movement of American culture through time. In the final essay, he looks at two distinctively American motifs of collective memory and tradition-old houses and elm trees. Throughout this interdisciplinary study, Kammen draws his examples from well-known and lesser-known artists, as well as from diverse American writers. Over 100 black-and-white illustrations accompany the text.Of interest to all students of American culture, Meadows of Memory raises intriguing questions about the American paradox of desiring to conquer mutability while yearning for emblems of a (perhaps imagined?) past.

In this lively narrative, award-winning author Michael Kammen presents a fascinating analysis of cutting-edge art and artists and their unique ability to both delight and provoke us. He illuminates America’s obsession with public memorials and the changing role of art and museums in our society. From Thomas Eakins’s 1875 masterpiece The Gross Clinic, (considered “too big, bold, and gory” when first exhibited) to the bitter disputes about Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial, this is an eye-opening account of American art and the battles and controversies that it has ignited.From the Trade Paperback edition.

In this major interpretive work Mr. Kammen argues that most attempt to understand America’s history and culture have minimized its complexity, and he demonstrates that, from our beginnings, what has given our culture its distinctive texture, pattern, and thrust is the dynamic interaction of the imported and the indigenous. He shows now, during the years of colonization, especially in the century from 1660 to 1760, many ideas and institutions were transferred virtually unchanged from Britain, while, simultaneously, others were being transformed in the New World environment. As he unravels the tangled origins of our “bittersweet” culture, Mr. Kammen makes us see that unresolved contradictions in the American experience have functioned as the prime characteristic of our national style. Puritanical and hedonistic, idealistic and materialistic, peace-loving and war-mongering, isolationist and interventionist, consensus-minded and conflict-prone—these opposing strands go back to the roots of our history. He pursues them down through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—from the traumas of colonization and settlement through the tensions of the American Revolution—making clear both the relevance of this early experience to ninetieth and twentieth-century realities and the way in which America’ dualisms have endured and accumulated to produced such dilemmas as today’s poverty amidst abundance and legitimized lawlessness. Far from being a study in social pathology, People of Paradox is a depiction of a complex society and am explanations of its development—a bold interpretation that gives an entirely new perceptive to the American ethos.

Americans have a long history of public arguments about taste, the uses of leisure, and what is culturally appropriate in a democracy that has a strong work ethic. Michael Kammen surveys these debates as well as our changing taste preferences, especially in the past century, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them.Professor Kammen shows how the post-traditional popular culture that flourished after the 1880s became full-blown mass culture after World War II, in an era of unprecedented affluence and travel. He charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass-marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the gradual repudiation of the genteel tradition; and the commercialization of organized entertainment. He stresses the significance of television in the shaping of mass culture, and of consumerism in its reconfiguration over the past two decades.Focusing on our own time, Kammen discusses the use of the fluid nature of cultural taste to enlarge audiences and increase revenues, and reveals how the public role of intellectuals and cultural critics has declined as the power of corporate sponsors and promoters has risen. As a result of this diminution of cultural authority, he says, definitive pronouncements have been replaced by divergent points of view, and there is, as well, a tendency to blur fact and fiction, reality and illusion.An important commentary on the often conflicting ways Americans have understood, defined, and talked about their changing culture in the twentieth century.

During the twenty years before the American Revolution, thirty-seven men acted as paid agent or lobbyists for the American colonies in England. The most famous among them were Benjamin Franklin, who represented four different colonies and served for seventeen years as agenet for Pennsylvania, and Edmund Burke, who accepted the position to further his own career. Yet the other thirty-five were also a colorful and heterogenous group. This detailed study, by a Pulitzer-prize-winning historian, of their activities and of the gradual breakdown of communications between the colonies and the mother country, until the link between the two become only "a rope of sand," is, in the words of the Richmond News Leader, "a new and invigorating approach to the American fight for independence.""Soundly documented, well organized and highly readable."- The New York Historical Society Quarterly"A challenging book about an important historical institution."- The Historian"A substantial contribution to our understanding of Anglo-American history during the eighteenth century."- The New England Quarterly"Both in concept and execution, A Rope of Sand is impressive."- The Journal of American History

From the beginning, what has given our culture its distinctive texture, pattern, and thrust, according to Michael Kammen, is the dynamic interaction of the imported and the indigenous. He shows how, during the years of colonization, some ideas and institutions were transferred virtually intact from Britain, while, simultaneously, others were being transformed in the New World. As he unravels the tangled origins of our culture, he makes us see that unresolved contradictions in the American experience have created our national style. Puritanical and hedonistic, idealistic and materialistic, peace-loving and war-mongering: these opposing strands go back to the genesis of our history.

England's Glorious Revolution of 1688 created a major crisis among the British colonies in America. Following news of the English Revolution, a series of rebellions and insurrections erupted in colonial America from Massachusetts to Carolina. Although the upheavals of 1689 were sparked by local grievances, there were also general causes for the repudiation of Stuart authority.Originally published in 1964.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

In this volume, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen explores the U.S. Constitution's place in the public consciousness and its role as a symbol in American life, from ratification in 1788 to our own time. As he examines what the Constitution has meant to the American people (perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and ignorance), Kammen shows that although there are recurrent declarations of reverence most of us neither know nor fully understand our Constitution. How did this gap between ideal and reality come about? To explain it, Kammen examines the complex and contradictory feelings about the Constitution that emerged during its preparation and that have been with us ever since. He begins with our confusion as to the kind of Union we created, especially with regard to how much sovereignty the states actually surrendered to the central government. This confusion is the source of the constitutional crisis that led to the Civil War and its aftermath. Kammen also describes and analyzes changing perceptions of the differences and similarities between the British and American constitutions; turn-of-the-century debates about states' rights versus national authority; and disagreements about how easy or difficult it ought to be to amend the Constitution. Moving into the twentieth century, he notes the development of a "cult of the Constitution" following World War I, and the conflict over policy issues that persisted despite a shared commitment to the Constitution.

In this volume, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen explores the U.S. Constitution''s place in the public consciousness and its role as a symbol in American life, from ratification in 1788 to our own time. As he examines what the Constitution has meant to the American people (perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and ignorance), Kammen shows that although there are recurrent declarations of reverence most of us neither know nor fully understand our Constitution. How did this gap between ideal and reality come about? To explain it, Kammen examines the complex and contradictory feelings about the Constitution that emerged during its preparation and that have been with us ever since. He begins with our confusion as to the kind of Union we created, especially with regard to how much sovereignty the states actually surrendered to the central government. This confusion is the source of the constitutional crisis that led to the Civil War and its aftermath. Kammen also describes and analyzes changing perceptions of the differences and similarities between the British and American constitutions; turn-of-the-century debates about states'' rights versus national authority; and disagreements about how easy or difficult it ought to be to amend the Constitution. Moving into the twentieth century, he notes the development of a "cult of the Constitution" following World War I, and the conflict over policy issues that persisted despite a shared commitment to the Constitution.

In this volume, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen explores the U.S. Constitution''s place in the public consciousness and its role as a symbol in American life, from ratification in 1788 to our own time. As he examines what the Constitution has meant to the American people (perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and ignorance), Kammen shows that although there are recurrent declarations of reverence most of us neither know nor fully understand our Constitution. How did this gap between ideal and reality come about? To explain it, Kammen examines the complex and contradictory feelings about the Constitution that emerged during its preparation and that have been with us ever since. He begins with our confusion as to the kind of Union we created, especially with regard to how much sovereignty the states actually surrendered to the central government. This confusion is the source of the constitutional crisis that led to the Civil War and its aftermath. Kammen also describes and analyzes changing perceptions of the differences and similarities between the British and American constitutions; turn-of-the-century debates about states'' rights versus national authority; and disagreements about how easy or difficult it ought to be to amend the Constitution. Moving into the twentieth century, he notes the development of a "cult of the Constitution" following World War I, and the conflict over policy issues that persisted despite a shared commitment to the Constitution.

In this volume, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen explores the U.S. Constitution's place in the public consciousness and its role as a symbol in American life, from ratification in 1788 to our own time. As he examines what the Constitution has meant to the American people (perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and ignorance), Kammen shows that although there are recurrent declarations of reverence most of us neither know nor fully understand our Constitution. How did this gap between ideal and reality come about? To explain it, Kammen examines the complex and contradictory feelings about the Constitution that emerged during its preparation and that have been with us ever since. He begins with our confusion as to the kind of Union we created, especially with regard to how much sovereignty the states actually surrendered to the central government. This confusion is the source of the constitutional crisis that led to the Civil War and its aftermath. Kammen also describes and analyzes changing perceptions of the differences and similarities between the British and American constitutions; turn-of-the-century debates about states' rights versus national authority; and disagreements about how easy or difficult it ought to be to amend the Constitution. Moving into the twentieth century, he notes the development of a "cult of the Constitution" following World War I, and the conflict over policy issues that persisted despite a shared commitment to the Constitution.

In artworks from a mosaic by Marc Chagall to schoolchildren''s paintings, in writings from Susan Fenimore Cooper to Annie Dillard, and in diverse print sources from family genealogical registers to seed catalogs, the four seasons appear and reappear as a theme in American culture. In this richly illustrated book, Michael Kammen traces the appeal of the four seasons motif in American popular culture and fine arts from the seventeenth century to the present. Its symbolism has evolved through the years, Kammen explains, serving as a metaphor for the human life cycle or religious faith, expressing nostalgia for rural life, and sometimes praising seasonal beauty in the diverse American landscape as the most spectacular in the world. Kammen also highlights artists'' and writers'' shift in attention from the glories of seasonal peaks to the dynamics of seasonal transitions as American life continued to accelerate and change through the twentieth century. Few symbols have been as pervasive, meaningful, and symptomatic in the human experience as the four seasons, and as Kammen shows, in its American context the annual cycle has been an abundant and abiding source of inspiration in the nation''s cultural history.

Liberty, one of the most consequential words in our language, is one of the most treasured concepts in American thought—and one of the most intensely debated. Its meaning is constantly shifting, changing not only from one culture to another but also, over time, within the same culture. No two definitions of liberty seem alike. In this subtle and illuminating work Michael Kammen traces the evolving concept of liberty throughout American history and provides a solid framework for understanding the meaning of the term today. He shows that by the early seventeenth century a tension between liberty and authority was well recognized. Throughout the eighteenth century and especially during the American Revolution a bond between liberty and property was asserted. By the end of the eighteenth century this concept of liberty was so well established that it remained dominant throughout the nineteenth. By the early twentieth century, as the notion of social justice gained prominence, liberty and justice were paired frequently, and by midcentury the two had become allied to general American values. Since the 1960s the union of liberty and equality has been the prevailing notion and achieving them has proved a major objective. In a lively and learned manner Kammen also shows that Americans have subscribed to different definitions of liberty concurrently. Above all, there has been a steady expansion of what is embraced by the concept of liberty. This expansion has created difficulties in public discourse, causing groups to misunderstand one another. On the other hand, interpretations of liberty have broadened to include such concepts as constraints on authority, a right to privacy, and the protection of personal freedoms. In a new preface for this Banner Books edition, Kammen responds to evaluations of earlier editions and places his views within the context of more recent studies.

Liberty, one of the most consequential words in our language, is one of the most treasured concepts in American thought--and one of the most intensely debated. Its meaning is constantly shifting, changing not only from one culture to another but also, over time, within the same culture. No two definitions of liberty seem alike.In this subtle and illuminating work Michael Kammen traces the evolving concept of liberty throughout American history and provides a solid framework for understanding the meaning of the term today. He shows that by the early seventeenth century a tension between liberty and authority was well recognized. Throughout the eighteenth century and especially during the American Revolution a bond between liberty and property was asserted. By the end of the eighteenth century this concept of liberty was so well established that it remained dominant throughout the nineteenth. By the early twentieth century, as the notion of social justice gained prominence, liberty and justice were paired frequently, and by midcentury the two had become allied to general American values. Since the 1960s the union of liberty and equality has been the prevailing notion, and achieving them has proved a major objective.In a lively and learned manner Kammen also shows that Americans have subscribed to different definitions of liberty concurrently. Above all, there has been a steady expansion of what is embraced by the concept of liberty. This expansion has created difficulties in public discourse, causing groups to misunderstand one another. On the other hand, interpretations of liberty have broadened to include such concepts as constraints on authority, a right to privacy, and the protection of personal freedoms.In a new preface for this Banner Books edition Kammen responds to evaluations of earlier editions and places his views within the context of more recent studies.

Liberty, one of the most consequential words in our language, is one of the most treasured concepts in American thought—and one of the most intensely debated. Its meaning is constantly shifting, changing not only from one culture to another but also, over time, within the same culture. No two definitions of liberty seem alike. In this subtle and illuminating work Michael Kammen traces the evolving concept of liberty throughout American history and provides a solid framework for understanding the meaning of the term today. He shows that by the early seventeenth century a tension between liberty and authority was well recognized. Throughout the eighteenth century and especially during the American Revolution a bond between liberty and property was asserted. By the end of the eighteenth century this concept of liberty was so well established that it remained dominant throughout the nineteenth. By the early twentieth century, as the notion of social justice gained prominence, liberty and justice were paired frequently, and by midcentury the two had become allied to general American values. Since the 1960s the union of liberty and equality has been the prevailing notion and achieving them has proved a major objective. In a lively and learned manner Kammen also shows that Americans have subscribed to different definitions of liberty concurrently. Above all, there has been a steady expansion of what is embraced by the concept of liberty. This expansion has created difficulties in public discourse, causing groups to misunderstand one another. On the other hand, interpretations of liberty have broadened to include such concepts as constraints on authority, a right to privacy, and the protection of personal freedoms. In a new preface for this Banner Books edition, Kammen responds to evaluations of earlier editions and places his views within the context of more recent studies.