Michael Zuckerman – författare

In this provocative analysis of the New England town before the Revolution, and of its enduring impact on the American character, Michael Zuckerman makes a major contribution toward a reinterpretation of the nature of American society and the origins of the non-liberal tradition in America. Arguing that the true concern of these towns was not the individual rights or liberties of the citizen, but rather the homogeneity and tranquility of the community, Mr. Zuckerman opens a new perspective on the phenomenon of American “town-meeting democracy.”

Few historians are bold enough to go after America's sacred cows in their very own pastures. But Michael Zuckerman is no ordinary historian, and this collection of his essays is no ordinary book. In his effort to remake the meaning of the American tradition, Zuckerman takes the entire sweep of American history for his province. The essays in this collection, including two never before published and a new autobiographical introduction, range from early New England settlements to the hallowed corridors of modern Washington. Among his subjects are Puritans and Southern gentry, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Spock, P. T. Barnum and Ronald Reagan. Collecting scammers and scoundrels, racists and rebels, as well as the purest genius, he writes to capture the unadorned American character. Recognized for his energy, eloquence, and iconoclasm, Zuckerman is known for provoking--and sometimes almost seducing--historians into rethinking their most cherished assumptions about the American past. Now his many fans, and readers of every persuasion, can newly appreciate the distinctive talents of one of America's most powerful social critics.

In 1900, Ellen Key wrote the international bestseller The Century of the Child. In this enormously influential book, she proposed that the world's children should be the central work of society during the twentieth century. Although she never thought that her "century of the child" would become a reality, in fact it had much more resonance than she could have imagined.The idea of the child as a product of a protective and coddling society has given rise to major theories and arguments since Key's time. For the past half century, the study of the child has been dominated by two towering figures, the psychologist Jean Piaget and the historian Philippe AriÈs. Interest in the subject has been driven in large measure by AriÈs's argument that adults failed even to have a concept of childhood before the thirteenth century, and that from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth there was an increasing "childishness" in the representations of children and an increasing separation between the adult world and that of the child. Piaget proposed that children's logic and modes of thinking are entirely different from those of adults. In the twentieth century this distance between the spheres of children and adults made possible the distinctive study of child development and also specific legislation to protect children from exploitation, abuse, and neglect. Recent students of childhood have challenged the ideas those titans promoted; they ask whether the distancing process has gone too far and has begun to reverse itself.In a series of essays, Beyond the Century of the Child considers the history of childhood from the Middle Ages to modern times, from America and Europe to China and Japan, bringing together leading psychologists and historians to question whether we unnecessarily infantilized children and unwittingly created a detrimental wall between the worlds of children and adults. Together these scholars address the question whether, a hundred years after Ellen Key wrote her international sensation, the century of the child has in fact come to an end.

The American Revolution conjures a series of iconographic images in the contemporary American imagination. In these imagined scenes, defiant Patriots fight against British Redcoats for freedom and democracy, while a unified citizenry rallies behind them and the American cause. But the lived experience of the Revolution was a more complex matter, filled with uncertainty, fear, and discord. In The American Revolution Reborn, editors Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman compile essays from a new generation of multidisciplinary scholars that render the American Revolution as a time of intense ambiguity and frightening contingency.The American Revolution Reborn parts company with the Revolution of our popular imagination and diverges from the work done by historians of the era from the past half-century. In the first section, "Civil Wars," contributors rethink the heroic terms of Revolutionary-era allegiance and refute the idea of patriotic consensus. In the following section, "Wider Horizons," essayists destabilize the historiographical inevitability of America as a nation. The studies gathered in the third section, "New Directions," present new possibilities for scholarship on the American Revolution. And the last section, titled "Legacies," collects essays that deal with the long afterlife of the Revolution and its effects on immigration, geography, and international politics. With an introduction by Spero and a conclusion by Zuckerman, this volume heralds a substantial and revelatory rebirth in the study of the American Revolution.Contributors: Zara Anishanslin, Mark Boonshoft, Denver Brunsman, Katherine CartÉ Engel, Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Travis Glasson, Edward G. Gray, David C. Hsiung, Ned C. Landsman, Michael A. McDonnell, Kimberly Nath, Bryan Rosenblithe, David S. Shields, Patrick Spero, Matthew Spooner, Aaron Sullivan, Michael Zuckerman.

A collection of stories by Penn alumni whose lives were transformed by engaging with the West Philadelphia communityFor over thirty years, the Barbara and Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships has served as the University of Pennsylvania's primary vehicle for advancing civic and community engagement at Penn. The Netter Center develops and helps implement democratic, mutually transformative, place-based partnerships between Penn and its local geographic community of West Philadelphia. These partnerships advance research, teaching, learning, and service while improving the quality of life and learning in the community. One of the Netter Center's primary objectives has been to educate Penn students to be creative, compassionate, ethical citizens who contribute significantly to improving the welfare of others—while they are students and throughout their lives and careers.Community-Engaged Scholarship is a collection of stories told by alumni of the University of Pennsylvania whose lives were profoundly shaped by engaging with the West Philadelphia community as students. Their reflections trace the linear relationship between their involvement in democratic community partnerships through Penn's Netter Center and their current professional activities, primarily in academia, where they remain actively engaged in the struggle to build a more democratic and equitable society. The mutuality and humility that pervade these autobiographical accounts are the core of the democratic aspiration to which the Netter Center is and has always been dedicated. The stories are testimony to the Netter Center's and founding director Ira Harkavy's enduring influence on the next generation of community-engaged scholars and practitioners.Contributors: H. Samy Alim, Jeff Camarillo, Christina Cantrill, Tamara Dubowitz, Bernice Garnett, Rita Axelroth Hodges, John L. Jackson Jr., Jacqueline Kraemer, David Park, Jiyoung Park, Wendell Pritchett, Eric Schwartz, Margo Shea, Salamishah Tillet, Kim Van Naarden Braun, Michael Vazquez, Jason Yip, Andrew Zitcer, Michael W. Zuckerman.