Being America
Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World
Published on 18. December 2007
368 pages
978-0-307-42494-5 (ISBN)
Description
Having risen to national attention with his first book, For Common Things, Jedediah Purdy now cements his claim to being one of the most arresting public intellectuals of his generation. In Being America, Purdy turns his erudition and unique perspective to America's relationship with a world that both admires and hates it.
Purdy has absorbed insights from people around the world: Westernized Egyptians who consider Osama bin Laden a hero, an urbane Indian who espouses gay rights and the most thuggish kind of Hindu nationalism, Cambodian sweat-shop workers, and others. Out of these conversations—and his inspired readings of political thinkers from Edmund Burke to James Madison—Purdy breathes new meaning into the American values of democracy, liberty, and free trade. Clear-thinking and far-sighted, Being America encourages America to strive to realize the potential it doesn't always know it has.
Purdy has absorbed insights from people around the world: Westernized Egyptians who consider Osama bin Laden a hero, an urbane Indian who espouses gay rights and the most thuggish kind of Hindu nationalism, Cambodian sweat-shop workers, and others. Out of these conversations—and his inspired readings of political thinkers from Edmund Burke to James Madison—Purdy breathes new meaning into the American values of democracy, liberty, and free trade. Clear-thinking and far-sighted, Being America encourages America to strive to realize the potential it doesn't always know it has.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
02/2004
Vintage Books
€21.50
Article exhausted; check different version
Jedediah Purdy
Being America
Book
02/2003
Random House USA Inc
€42.24
Article exhausted; check different version
Person
Jedediah Purdy grew up in West Virginia and attended Harvard College and Yale Law School. He has served as a fellow at the New America Foundation and the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School.
Content
- Intro
- TITLE PAGE
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- DEDICATION
- PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION
- PREFACE TO THE VINTAGE EDITION
- PART I
- CHAPTER 1
- The Weapons of History
- Memory and Hurt
- CHAPTER 2
- Choice and Resentment
- The Empire of Desire
- CHAPTER 3
- The Innocent Nation
- The Visible Empire
- CHAPTER 4
- The Liberal Temper
- Liberal Circumstances
- PART II
- CHAPTER 5
- Diaspora Lives
- Choices of Inheritance
- CHAPTER 6
- Blood Reckonings
- The Necessary Danger
- Ways of Being Who We Are
- CHAPTER 7
- The City of God
- Birds of Prey and Passage
- CHAPTER 8
- PART III
- CHAPTER 9
- Adam Smith's "If "
- Sweatshop Politics
- The Gap Among the Khmer
- CHAPTER 10
- The Wish for Kings
- Middle-Class Nationalism
- The Hunger for Virtue
- The Hollow Center
- The Indonesian Storm
- The Hidden Hand
- CHAPTER 11
- The Brahmin as Entrepreneur
- PART IV
- CHAPTER 12
- The Oratory of Commerce
- Adam Smith's Lace Waistcoat
- The Eternal Argument
- CHAPTER 13
- CHAPTER 14
- PART V
- CHAPTER 15
- The Bargain of Modernity
- CHAPTER 16
- Reason About Unreason: History and the Passions
- Living in History
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- BIBLIOGRAPHIC GLOSSARY
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- ALSO BY JEDEDIAH PURDY
- COPYRIGHT PAGE
