Daniel T. Rodgers

Rodgers presents the first broadly gauged history of the ideas and arguments that profoundly reshaped America in the last quarter of the twentieth century. From the ways in which Ronald Reagan changed the formulas of the Cold War presidency to the era’s intense debates over gender, race, economics, and history, it maps the dynamics through which mid-twentieth-century ideas of structure fell apart between the mid 1970s and the end of the century. Where conventional histories of modern America have focused on specific decades, the book traces the larger transformations in social ideas and visions that reshaped the era from the early 1970s through the end of the century.

Age of Fracture

Traces the efforts of politicians of the Progressive and New Deal periods to form a humanitarian social policy based on the example of European nations, revealing the international origins of America's city planning, public housing, and welfare policies. UP.

Social Politics in a Progressive Age

Atlantic Crossings

How the rise of machines changed the way we think about work—and about success. The phrase “a strong work ethic” conjures images of hard-driving employees working diligently for long hours. But where did this ideal come from, and how has it been buffeted by changes in work itself? While seemingly rooted in America’s Puritan heritage, perceptions of work ethic have actually undergone multiple transformations over the centuries. And few eras saw a more radical shift than the American industrial age. Daniel T. Rodgers masterfully explores the ways in which the eclipse of small-scale workshops by mechanized production and mass consumption triggered far-reaching shifts in perceptions of labor, leisure, and personal success. He also shows how the new work culture permeated society, including literature, politics, the emerging feminist movement, and the labor movement. A staple of courses in the history of American labor and industrial society, Rodgers’s sharp analysis is as relevant as ever as twenty-first-century workers face another shift brought about by technology. The Work Ethic in Industrial America 1850–1920 is a classic with critical relevance in today’s volatile economic times.

Second Edition

The Work Ethic in Industrial America 1850-1920

The language of argument uses particular words with particular, sometimes shifting meanings, though time. It is true that politicians may act as though they are part of no particular ideological tradition, but history shows that they mainly use an understood meaning to enhance their actions.

Keywords in American Politics Since Independence

Contested Truths

"'For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill,' John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630. More than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into a ... celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop's long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American identity and exceptionalism? In [this book], ... Daniel Rodgers tells the surprising story of one of the most celebrated documents in the canon of the American idea"--Dust jacket fla

The Story of America's Most Famous Lay Sermon

As a City on a Hill

Bhavani Raman

Helmut Reimitz

In the wide-ranging and innovative essays of Cultures in Motion, a dozen distinguished historians offer new conceptual vocabularies for understanding how cultures have trespassed across geography and social space. From the transformations of the meanings and practices of charity during late antiquity and the transit of medical knowledge between early modern China and Europe, to the fusion of Irish and African dance forms in early nineteenth-century New York, these essays follow a wide array of cultural practices through the lens of motion, translation, itinerancy, and exchange, extending the insights of transnational and translocal history. Cultures in Motion challenges the premise of fixed, stable cultural systems by showing that cultural practices have always been moving, crossing borders and locations with often surprising effect. The essays offer striking examples from early to modern times of intrusion, translation, resistance, and adaptation. These are histories where nothing--dance rhythms, alchemical formulas, musical practices, feminist aspirations, sewing machines, streamlined metals, or labor networks--remains stationary. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Celia Applegate, Peter Brown, Harold Cook, April Masten, Mae Ngai, Jocelyn Olcott, Mimi Sheller, Pamela Smith, and Nira Wickramasinghe.

Daniel T. Rodgers

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