A Nation of Agents Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:
In this sweeping reinterpretation of American political culture, James Block offers a new perspective on the formation of the modern American self and society. Block roots both self and society in the concept of agency, rather than liberty, and dispenses with the national myth of the "sacred cause of liberty"--with the Declaration of Independence as its "American scripture." Instead, he recovers the early modern conception of agency as the true synthesis emerging from America's Protestant and liberal cultural foundations.

Block traces agency doctrine from its pre-Commonwealth English origins through its development into the American mainstream culture on the eve of the twentieth century. The concept of agency that prevailed in the colonies simultaneously released individuals from traditional constraints to participate actively and self-reliantly in social institutions, while confining them within a new set of commitments. Individual initiative was now firmly bounded by the modern values and ends of personal Protestant religiosity and collective liberal institutional authority. As Block shows, this complex relation of self to society lies at the root of the American character.

A Nation of Agents is a new reading of what the "first new nation" did and did not achieve. It will enable us to move beyond long-standing national myths and grasp both the American achievement and its legacy for modernity.



Table of Contents:

Preface

1. The American Narrative in Crisis

Part I. The English Origins of the American Self and Society
2. The Early Puritan Insurgents and the Origins of Agency
3. The Protestant Revolutionaries and the Emerging Society of Agents
4. Thomas Hobbes and the Founding of the Liberal Politics of Agency
5. John Locke and the Mythic Society of Free Agents

Part II. The Ascendancy of Agency and the First New Nation
6. The Great Awakening and the Emergent Culture of Agency
7. The Revolutionary Triumph of Agency

Part III. The Dilemma of Nationhood
8. The Liberal Idyll amidst Republican Realities
9. From the Idyll: Liberation and Reversal in a World without Bounds

Part IV. The Creation of an Agency Civilization
10. National Revival as the Crucible of Agency Character
11. From Sectarian Discord to Civil Religion
12. The Protestant Agent in Liberal Economics
13. John Dewey and the Modern Synthesis

Conclusion: The Recovery of Agency

Notes
Index

Reviews of this book:
A Nation of Agents is a work of extravagant erudition and originality. James E. Block has read voraciously in the sources, seen things that few have seen before, and put them together as none have done before. He sets forth a new view of American culture, threading his thesis through three centuries of American thought and the preceding century of English thinking besides.
--Michael Zuckerman, Journal of American History

Reviews of this book:
What a wonder then is James Block's book, a daring master narrative and bracing theoretical exercise of the first order. It promises and delivers nothing less than a fundamental recasting of 'the American path to a modern self and society.'
--Robert Westbrook, Christian Century

Reviews of this book:
James Block's big, ambitious A Nation of Agents leaves no doubt about its aspirations in the contest to solve the Gordian knot of the relationship between the one and the many in American social thought...The subtlety and acuity with which Block develops these themes through scores of thinkers and over 500 pages can scarcely be exaggerated. A Nation of Agents is a genuinely prodigious work of scholarship.
--Daniel T. Rodgers, Modern Intellectual History

This is an original and exciting work of scholarship, in which the idea of agency takes on the characteristics of a...

A Nation of Agents by James E. BLOCK

From reader reviews:

George Finch:

Have you spare time for just a day? What do you do when you have far more or little spare time? Yes, you can choose the suitable activity to get spend your time. Any person spent their very own spare time to take a stroll, shopping, or went to the actual Mall. How about open or maybe read a book eligible A Nation of Agents? Maybe it is to get best activity for you. You recognize beside you can spend your time along with your favorite's book, you can wiser than before. Do you agree with the opinion or you have other opinion?

Ashley Paul:

Do you one of people who can't read gratifying if the sentence chained inside the straightway, hold on guys this specific aren't like that. This A Nation of Agents book is readable by you who hate those straight word style. You will find the data here are arrange for enjoyable studying experience without leaving even decrease the knowledge that want to provide to you. The writer involving A Nation of Agents content conveys the idea easily to understand by many people. The printed and e-book are not different in the content material but it just different such as it. So , do you nonetheless thinking A Nation of Agents is not loveable to be your top collection reading book?

Sara Kelly:

The knowledge that you get from A Nation of Agents is a more deep you excavating the information that hide into the words the more you get serious about reading it. It does not mean that this book is hard to know but A Nation of Agents giving you buzz feeling of reading. The writer conveys their point in certain way that can be understood through anyone who read the idea because the author of this guide is well-known enough. That book also makes your own vocabulary increase well. Therefore it is easy to understand then can go together with you, both in printed or e-book style are available. We recommend you for having this kind of A Nation of Agents instantly.

Joan Ortega:

Do you like reading a guide? Confuse to looking for your selected book? Or your book had been rare? Why so many problem for the book? But just about any people feel that they enjoy for reading. Some people likes examining, not only science book but novel and A Nation of Agents or perhaps others sources were given information for you. After you know how the good a book, you feel want to read more and more. Science reserve was created for teacher or perhaps students especially. Those books are helping them to increase their knowledge. In other case, beside science reserve, any other book likes A Nation of Agents to make your spare time more colorful. Many types of book like here.