Book Description
At the end of the Reconstruction, the spread of science and technology, industrialism, urbanization, immigration, and economic depressions eroded Americans' conventional beliefs in individualism and a divinely ordained social system. In The Search for Order, Robert Wiebe shows how, in subsequent years, during theProgressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Americans sought the organizing principles around which a new viable social order could be constructed in the modern world. This subtle and sophisticated study combines the virtues of historical narrative, sociological analysis, and social criticism.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent synthesis of this period.......2007-01-09
This book provides an excellent, and now classic, synthesis of the cultural, intellectual, and political evolutions during this period of industrialization, urbanization, and economic change. Highly recommended to scholars and highly accessible to amateurs.
Interesting look at the growth of a giant.......2006-05-01
Historian Robert Wiebe examines the USA as it emerged from mostly rural society to an industrial giant during the years 1876-1920. The author shows that the USA grew from a series of largely independent, mostly Protestant, small-town communities at the end of Reconstruction, to a more interlocked, diverse, and urbanized society by the end of the First World War. As the USA grew into the world's foremost power, diffuse forces arose to both lead and to give the changing society a sense of order. Those forces included industrialization, professionalism, scientific management, progressive reform, bureaucracy, and urbanization. In short, most elements of modern society. Not that this melding process was perfect - much division, racism, and inequality remained - but the melding process was a powerful and successful one.
We studied this book in a college history class and it was one of the best we read; not as stiffly written as some histories and very informative.
A "Revolution in Values" Thoroughly Explained.......2001-09-30
In "The Search for Order," Robert Wiebe provides perhaps the first unifying overview of the American Progressive period. Beginning with the Reconstruction era, Wiebe presents the United States as "a nation of loosely connected islands." The economic panic of 1873 began what Wiebe describes as as a "soul searching" period for these homogenous, stable, primarily Protestant "island communities." America was noticeably changing from simple, locally-oriented communities guided by small town ethics to complex, interdependent societies seemingly controlled by distant and impersonal forces. Wiebe explains the ways in which Americans sought to regain some sense of order as this rapidly changing nation rumbled through the first decades of the twentieth century.
A "revolution in values" took place during this "search for order." Wiebe traces a pattern of "bureaucratization" in such diverse areas as science, philosophy, business, education, journalism, law, medicine, and social work (although Wiebe neglects the influence of arts and technology). A new middle class emerged as certain occupations such as law, medicine, and teaching became professionalized. Journalism became more scientific. Social workers began to establish their distinct field. "Idealists" and "utopianists" advocated the idea of progress by stages. A "business unionism" developed establishing a set of values for organized labor and carrying "the obligation that union executives become experts in their particular industry" (125). Factories turned to scientific management. With the establishment of the American Farm Burea, even farmers allowed their former image as "the people" to fade in favor of an agricultural business image. Such bureaucratic solutions were also attempted on an international level with the League of Nations (curiously, foreign policy makers seemed quite confident of America's superior place in the world despite domestic confusion). In other words, when the new middle class joined the Progressive movement, reform had altered its meaning from results to procedures.
The success of this bureaucratic integration was made evident by the ability of the nation to mobilize for the First World War. However, as Wiebe maintains, the successes of the Progressive movement actually helped lead to its downfall. Achievements such as financial reform following the panic of 1907, workmen's compensation laws, and policies under Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom "dulled the reforming urge" (212). Former Progressives began to defend the status quo as the nation entered the 1920s. What is more, the Progressives had "constructed just an approach to reform, mistaking it for the finished product" (223). Although Wiebe does not fully explain the reasons Americans turned to bureaucratic trends in their "search for order" and is often guilty of over-generalizing, over-intellectualizing, and inundating his work with an excessive use of abstractions, he does make a strong case that there was a "revolution in values" during the Progressive era. These values of Progressivism are with us today, including an active executive begun during the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
Groundbreaking Study.......2000-12-07
This book set the agenda for research in Gilded Age/Progressive Era studies for the current generation of American historians. It is a groundbreaking study which is not overly long and is very well written. It is one of the most widely used overview texts for the period in graduate history courses. If you only want to read one book on this period, make it this one.
FANTASTIC.......1998-06-22
Mr. Wiebe has done an excellent job of getting beneath all the confusion and conflict of America's history from the end of Reconstruction to the eve of the 1920's. To understand how many of the elements of our modern society came into being, and how and why the United States became a world power, one must go back to this period (1877-1920) to trace their origins. The book, while revealing many triumphs of our nation at this time, also reminds us of the tragedies which inevitably shaped our country's present course (ie World War I). Overall, it is a book of great value, for it sheds some much needed light on a very complex portion of our nation's history.
Average customer rating:
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Order and History (Volume 5): In Search of Order (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 18)
Eric Voegelin
Manufacturer: University of Missouri Press
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ASIN: 0826212611 |
Book Description
Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss are two of the most provocative and durable political philosophers of this century. Ted McAllister's superbly written study provides the first comprehensive comparison of their thought and its profound influence on contemporary American conservatism.
Since the appearance in the 1950s of Strauss's Natural Right and History and Voegelin's Order and History, conservatives like Russell Kirk, Irving Kristol, and Allan Bloom have increasingly turned to these thinkers to support their attacks on liberalism and the modernist mindset.
Like so many conservatives, Strauss and Voegelin rebelled against modernity, amorality--personified by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche--and its promotion of individualism and materialism over communal and spiritual responsibility. While both disdained the reductionist "conservative" label, conservatives nevertheless appropriated their philosophy, in part because it restored theology and classical tradition to the moral core of civil society.
For both men, modernity's debilitating disorder revealed surprising and disturbing relations among liberal, communist, and Nazi ideologies. In their eyes, modernity's insidious virus, so apparent in the Nazi and communist regimes, lies incubating within liberal democracy itself.
McAllister's thorough reevaluation of Strauss and Voegelin expands our understanding of their thought and restores balance to a literature that has been dominated by political theorists and disciples of Strauss and Voegelin. Neither reverential nor dismissive, he reveals the social, historical, political, and philosophical foundations of their work and effectively decodes their frequently opaque or esoteric thinking.
Well written and persuasively argued, McAllister's study will appeal to anyone engaged in the volatile debates over liberalism's demise and conservatism's rise.
This book is part of the American Political Thought series.
Customer Reviews:
Good Stuff.......2000-01-13
McAllister really seems to understand Strauss, which is more than can be said about many who write about Strauss (scholars and otherwise). This will serve as a useful antidote. And of course, Voegelin has long been neglected, so any work treating him seriously is a welcome addition. This should be in the library of serious political theorists.
Ted V. McAllister's account of Machiavelli and Plato........1998-05-10
In having Dr. Ted V. McAllister as my Western and American Heritage Professor at Hillsdale College,I was able to fully appreciate his historical views on a personal basis. His knowledge of Niccolo Machiavelli and modernity, and the philosophy of Plato relating to Western history is unparalled. His views in his book are presented in a true and indepth fashion. After being his student for two semesters, I will truely miss his insight and knowledge pertaining to historical matters.
Book Description
This major study re-examines fundamental aspects of what has been widely labeled the printing revolution of the early modern period. David McKitterick argues that many of the changes associated with printing were only gradually absorbed over almost 400 years, a much longer period than usually suggested. He re-evaluates the modern myths and misconceptions surrounding the emergence of print and invites readers to work forward from the past, rather than backwards into it.
Customer Reviews:
In-Depth Look at Print Culture.......2004-02-12
This book, with its detailed descriptions of catalouging techniques in the Bodelian and twenty pages of commentary on printers' errata sheets, should have been boring.
Happily, it wasn't.
The author has managed to make this book into a wonderfully coherent, in-depth, chronological exploration of how people over the centuries have read, used and abused books, and about changing understandings of what a book was and what it ought or ought not to do. I especially liked how the chapters on censorship showed the long history of this practice, as well as the long history of people who manage to read censored works anyway.
I thought that the final chapter on what books are today and what internet publishing may do to them in the future was a little skimpy, but it's generally a worthwhile read, and turned an obscure topic into something really interesting.
Book Description
Sixteenth-century Europeans launched a struggle for order with an intensity and urgency that finds no parallels in modern European history. For the rural societies of Germany, the early sixteenth century brought massive upheavals that eroded the basis of social, political, economic, and religious life. In this probing study of village life, based on rich manuscript sources from the Old County of Hohenlohe, the author seeks to understand how petty German princes, Lutheran pastors, and villagers struggled to create order out of their confusing world. He shows that the foundations for social stability so evident in Germany after 1648 were laid in the forgotten era of German history, in the years after the early Reformation and before the Thirty Years' War.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful Book.......2004-04-27
True, no one is going to pick up this book for a little light reading, but it is a wonderful resource for primary sources for a college term paper.
This book saved my bacon during preperation for my senior seminar.
At the origins of the modern State.......2000-06-30
This study focuses on one problem: the search for social order, discipline, and hierarchy in a time disturbing change and disorder. But this book also looks at the problem of social order as a part of another problem: the exercise of power. In this sense, a comparative analysis of Germany is the occasion for an interesting reflexion about the origins and the nature of modern State. Robisheaux's research can interest historians, but philophers and political scientists too.
Book Description
America at the beginning of 1917 was a nation mobilizing for war. It was also a nation potentially capable of developing the world's first mass consumption economy. Institutionally and ideologically it was a nation without the institutions capable of ensuring that the new sources of authority would be used to further the ends of liberal democracy and national progress. This highly regarded volume reexamines America's historical development during the years from 1917 to 1933, focusing in particular on wartime mobilization and action as well as the rise and collapse of the world's first mass consumption economy. Hawley also explores the continued search for a modern managerial order geared to the realization of liberal ideals during this period.
Book Description
Written by one of the leading archaeological writers in the world—in a simple, jargon-free narrative style—this brief, well-illustrated account of the major developments in the human past (from the origins of humanity to the origins of literate civilization) makes world prehistory uniquely accessible to complete beginners. Up-to-date and state-of-the-art in content and perspective, it covers the entire world (not just the Americas or Europe), placing major emphasis on both theories and the latest archaeological and multidisciplinary approaches. The main focus is on four major developments—the origins of humanity; the appearance and spread of modern humans before and during the late Ice Age, including the first settlement of the Americas; the beginnings of food production; and the rise of the first civilizations. For individuals who want to get acquainted with anthropology.
Customer Reviews:
Man's origins and developments for the general reader.......2003-04-02
Man's innate curiosity with their past has given birth to sciences that attempt to satisfy such curiosity. Brian Fagan, an archaeologist himself, outlines brilliantly the major developments of humankind in prehistory, from that scientific perspective. Sophisticated theories and tools from disciplines such archaeology, biology, ecology, geology and even genetics and psychology are elaborated for the general reader. Utilising such diversity of disciplines, World Prehistory introduces to the reader, the developments of humankind- the origins, exodus and migration of man, food production and state formation- from the earliest times especially before written records were available.
Even before Fagan gets into details, he outlines the scope of the book and distinguishes the discipline of archaeology insofar as it is scientific, rigorous and it utilises tools and expertise from other disciplines. Throughout the book, there are scientific archaeological explanations in the form of theories, data and methodologies and at the very onset, the author derides the "romantic world of high adventure and exciting discovery" connected to pseudoarcheaology, which to him belongs to the "realms of religious faith and science fiction".
The book is divided into 4 parts in a generally chronological arrangement. The first part introduces to the reader the study of human prehistory with succinct explanations of the concepts of history, culture, space and time. Part 2 outlines scientific approaches to explain the origins of mankind and his relationships with other primates. The author draws evidence from geology, genetics and most importantly, paleoanthropology (the specialized study of human bone remains). Part 2 also presents one of the most controversial questions in anthropology, that is the path of migration of modern man. The author favours the "African exodus Theory"" and describes it in detail. Part 3 is a discussion of the birth of the modern world with special emphasis on the origins of food production, one of the hallmarks of ancient civilisations. The book culminates in Part 4, with very broad discussions on ancient civilisations in Western Asia, Africa, South, Southeast and East Asia and the Americas.
As an introductory book to world prehistory, it lacks detailed study of other aspects of prehistoric mankind's developments especially in the fields of language, religion and a new, exciting and only recently explored field of psychological archaeology, dealing with the minds and thinking of the earliest humans. The latter, the author concedes, must go beyond material remains and develop new ways to explore the minds of the earliest humans and understand why they developed the way they did.
However, as with most introductory books, World Prehistory can only describe its subject matter at surface level. However, after reading the book, I have obtained a general sense of the methods and theories that attempt to explain with the period of human history which was not recorded in writing. With so many theories, methods and even non-scientific explanations of mankind's ancient past, World Prehistory is a good book to introduce a reader to the latest and most widely accepted tools, methodologies and theories.
A very decent book.......2000-04-30
This book is not designed for the hardcore anthropology student as it doesn't delve into the extreme details of the subject, but it does give a very broad overview of the millions of years of human prehistory. Most of the time is spent talking about the journey from ape-like ancestors to the origin of food production and the large state-run societies that we have today. Therefore, when Fagan talks about specific cultures and societies he just gives an overview, he chooses to put most details to use describing why and how humans got to where they are today. Very good book is you want an effective and interesting introduction to human origins, but this isn't something that would be used for a 300 or 400 level class.
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The Age of Reform
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The Incorporation of America [25th Anniversary Edition]: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age
Standing at Armageddon: The United States 1877-1919
A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920
Franklin D Roosevelt And The New Deal
