The Americans: The National ExperienceThis second volume in "The Americans" trilogy deals with the crucial period of American history from the Revolution to the Civil War. Here we meet the people who shaped, and were shaped by, the American experience—the versatile New Englanders, the Transients and the Boosters. Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize. |
Contents
How the Planter Lest His Versatility | 171 |
Indelible Immigrants | 179 |
The Negroes Churches | 190 |
How It Grew in Slavery | 199 |
How Southern Gentlemen Became Honorbound | 206 |
Metaphysical Politics | 212 |
BOOK TWO NATIONALITY | 219 |
PART FIVE THE VAGUENESS OF THE LAND | 221 |
Joiners | 49 |
Men Move in Groups | 51 |
The Organizers | 57 |
Community Before Government | 65 |
Claim Clubs and Priority Rule | 72 |
Vigilantism and Majority Rule | 81 |
Leaving Things Behind | 90 |
Getting There First | 97 |
The Democracy of Haste | 107 |
Boosters | 113 |
The Businessman as an American Institution | 115 |
The Booster Press | 124 |
Palaces of the Public | 134 |
The BalloonFrame House | 148 |
The Booster College | 152 |
Competitive Communities | 161 |
Southerners White and Black | 169 |
Settlement Before Discovery | 223 |
Packaging a Continent | 241 |
Government as a Service Institution | 249 |
Uncertain Boundaries | 256 |
A Dubious Destiny | 264 |
PART SIX AMERICAN WAYS OF TALKING | 275 |
An Ungoverned Vocabulary | 277 |
HalfTruth or HalfLie? | 289 |
The Language of Anticipation | 296 |
Names in Profusion and Confusion | 299 |
A Declamatory Literature | 307 |
SEARCH FOR SYMBOLS | 325 |
PART EIGHT | 391 |
Acknowledgments | 431 |
| 497 | |
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