Lately I have been reading in my favorite genre of intellectual history:  monographs that pair sharp conceptual focus with ample chronological – and sometimes spatial – sweep.  Think James Kloppenberg’s Toward Democracy, or Sara Georgini’s American Gods, Jill Lepore’s The Name of War, Philip Gura’s American Transcendentalism and Barbara Packer’s The Transcendentalists, Reginald Horsman’s Race and Manifest Destiny, James Turner’s Without God, Without Creed, Henry May’s Enlightenment in America. These are the kinds of books I like to read when I am in the weeds writing about some painfully particular and wearingly narrow piece of the past – say, January Read more