On an excellent suggestion by Stephen Whitfield, the S-USIH Blog will host a symposium on Max Lerner‘s America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today. The symposium will take place sometime in Spring or Summer 2017. Whitfield will be a participant. If you’re interested in joining, send me an email.
From Whitfield: 2017 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of what might be considered the last synoptic effort by a single intelligence to comprehend the national experience. Max Lerner’s America as a Civilization (1957), published in a single volume (then 2 volumes in paperback), was once hailed as a classic, a successor to Tocqueville in its ambition and range. Yet “America as a Civilization” has now sunk into oblivion. Does this book deserve to be? How do its claims and frame look from the perspective of 2017?
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