individualism

The Author’s Corner with Maurizio Valsania

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Maurizio Valsania is Professor of American History at the University of Turin. This interview is based on his new book, First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). JF: What led you...

The Author’s Corner with Alex Zakaras

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Alex Zakaras is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont. This interview is based on his new book, The Roots of American Individualism: Political Myth in the Age of Jackson (Princeton University Press, 2022). JF: What led...

How the British monarch defies modernity

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Here is Sebastian Milbank at the British website The Critic: In an increasingly secular and individualist world, it is very rare to see people who have given over their lives to a calling or vocation that swamps and overshadows their...

The Author’s Corner with William Novak

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William Novak is Charles F. and Edith J. Clyne Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. This interview is based on his new book, New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State (Harvard University Press, 2022)....

The Author’s Corner with Robert Gross

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Robert A. Gross is Emeritus Draper Professor of Early American History at the University of Connecticut. This interview is based on his new book, The Transcendentalists and Their World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). JF: What led you to ​write The Transcendentalists...

Jill Lepore on the state of “society”

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Here is a taste of the Harvard historian’s recent piece at The Guardian: In March 2020, Boris Johnson, pale and exhausted, self-isolating in his flat on Downing Street, released a video of himself – that he had taken himself –...

Joan Chittister on the Beatitudes

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Here is the Benedictine Sister at the National Catholic Reporter: In Scripture, we find the Beatitudes, the signs of what it means to be a good human being, an ethical government, a moral country. The renewal of the United States...

Commonplace Book #198

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However much the United States has been a moral or religious nation guided by (individual) impulses of spirit and conscience, it has also seen repeated mergers, or confusions, of religious and material intentions. One would be hard-pressed to argue that...

Do Americans still believe in the common good?

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It’s a fair question. Here is Kentucky-based writer Silas House at The Atlantic: Refusing to sacrifice for the common good is an American problem, not just a Kentucky one; opposition to masking and vaccination is happening in such disparate places...

What about proof of vaccination?

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Here is Dr. Leana Wen at The Washington Post: For months, I have been criticizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for being too cautious with its guidance for what fully vaccinated people can do. I saw little incentive...

Why don’t white evangelicals vote for Democrats?

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Historian Daniel Williams, in a thought-provoking piece at The Anxious Bench, asks: Why have white evangelicals been so antipathetic to Democrats, even before their disagreements with Democrats over abortion or LGBT issues emerged?  And can anything ever convince them to...