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Rebirth Of A Nation: The Making Of Modern America, 1877-1920 (2009)

by Jackson Lears(Favorite Author)

3.42 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0060747498 (ISBN13: 9780060747497)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Harper

review 1: This book covers a large period of American history, beginning from right after the Civil War to the 1920's. But doing so, Lears fails to reflect clearly the real motives of the prominent people of certain outstanding periods such as the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Plain rhetoric is what you will encounter in the book. The traditional historical narrative seems to be sucked out of it completely. And calling Theodore Roosevelt an imperialist with boyish bellicosity? Give me a break.
review 2: Lear’s argues that in the period between the Civil War and World War I, Americans yearned for spiritual, moral, and physical regeneration; furthermore, he contends that these hopes formed the social foundation for 20th century America. Lears asserts that tensions ... morein American society are rooted in religious conflict, and the spirit of rebirth in “Protestant patterns of conversion.” In my reading these contentions were not adequately followed through with. Transformation through market exchange, militarism, racism, and athleticism stood out as thematically stronger strains in Lear’s narrative, which nicely surveys the cultural life of period. Enjoyable read; though I had to mark off my rating for minor factual errors (Emerson's transcendent epiphany did not take place on Concord common!) and the conflation of broadly related topics at times. I also was troubled by Lears' use of the term "antimodern modernist." less

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