Hofstadter's classic work remains one of the outstanding challenges to the effect of Darwin's theory of evolution on social attitudes and beliefs. One of the great fallacies of evolutionary thinking can arise from the assumption of universal application of its mechanism of natural selection to all times, thus to the present and future. This is a fallacy and an inherent trap in confusing evolutionary process with a natural law, as in physics. The result of Darwin's theory was to make 'natural selection' a social strategy in the minds of many in a total confusion of theoretical domains of application. The outcome was the many variants of Social Darwinism that stretch into our own times. Hofstadter's documentation of the many shades of opinion generates a sense of deja vu, for few of the viewpoints we hear now are new and appear somewhere in the book, in a merry-go-round of confused thinking. It is a dreadful legacy that too many fell obligated to correct in the wrong fashion, by exempting Darwin entirely, and blaming those who came afterwards. In fact, the perception that Darwin's theory is simply wrong or incomplete is the only antidote to social Darwinist attitudes, which linger in the tacit belief of too many in the need to mimic the ruthlessness enjoined by a confused theory. Robert Bannister's Social Darwinism is also a partial comment on Hofstadter, but does not supercede this original and enduring work.

Richard Hofstadter is an excellent historian of the trends in American political, social, and religious thought. This book chronicles the rise and fall of Herbert Spencer's philosophy as a reinforcing doctrine for laissez-faire political economy. Hofstadter deftly combines his own observations with carefully selected quotes from the thinkers themselves. One lesson that may be gleaned from this work is that controversial and complex ideas such as Darwinian evolution may be used for a multiplicity of purposes, some of them conflicting. For those who seek a greater insight to the struggle between individualism and collectivism in American political culture. I would also recommend reading Will Durant's chapter on Herbert Spencer in The Story of Philosophy as a supplement.

This is going to be short and sweet. The book is excellent for research. It gives you a history of the events that occurred throughout the time period of 1584 - 1775 and then includes primary documents. There are many different perspectives from one document to another. If you're interested in history or are doing research on a particular subject in this era, I would recommend this book to you.

This book contains the most important and pivotal documents of the period, as well as just enough insightful background to the period to allow a better than average understanding of the document. For fans of the Constitution and the judiciary, the sections on the convention and Marbury v Madison are simply candy. The Gettysburg Address and its supporting section are heartbreaking.

This is a decent anthology containing various important documents in U.S. history. It is great for history assignments and studying history. It includes basically all major works in the period (gettysburg, 14 pts, 4 freedoms, i have a dream, presidents' inauguration speeches...) as well as some interesting views from other sources.

Hofstadter was the pre-eminent historian of the middle of hte century and this is his most enduring and still widely read book. It discusses the ideological strands and impulses that went into the Populist Progressive and later new deal movements. This is the history of ideas not events. Although his view of the progressive era has held up well, demeans the POpulsits as backwards utopians who dreamed for a Jeffersonian existence that never really was and was certainly unrealistic by the 1890s. He also sees them as xenophobic and anti-semetic. Much new historical work on the Populsits has been done since the 1950's which paints them in a better light. Most noteably Lawrence Goodwyn's "The Populist Moment" sees the movement as a kind of conciousness raising exercise whic empowered its members.

The book is quite relevant today because many pundits compare the politics and idelolgy of today led by left of center technocrats (Bill Clinton) who wish to control big business to a similar impulse of the turn of the century by Progressives. (teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson).

A good companion to this Book is Eric Foner's "The Story of American Freedom" which also traces the history of American ideologcal changes over the years. Foner also studied under Hofstdter at Columbia.

Hofstadter ranks with Bancroft, Beard, and Tuckman as one of the great scholars of American history. AGE OF REFORM definitely shows why; his scholarly, permeating style impresses his words into your mind, changing both your scope and sense of American history. In this book, he tracks various reformist groups that shaped America, starting with the Populists of the late 19th century and ending with the New Deal reforms of FDR.

Hofstadter's thoughts on the early 20th century Progressives and New Dealers conform with the writings of most other historians. It is Hofstadter's section on the Populists that has always generated the most controversey, both in the past and still today. In the first third of the book, Hofstadter writes of the American "agrarian myth" and how the Populist farmers sought the "lost agrarian ideals" of Jefferson and Jackson. He emphasizes how the Populists were basically reactionary whiners who impetuously thought themselves deserving of some special privelage, simply because they were farmers, the supposed "All-American" profession. Hofstadter goes further by describing the Populists as jingoistic proto-facists. By use of effective documentation, he shows this "dark side" of Populism, with its demagogic rants against politicians, urbanites, Britons, Jews, and immigrants.

Although Hofstadter indeed is very effective in his writing and documentation, he fails in the aspect of fair historical analysis. When one reads AGE OF REFORM, one should always remember the Populists from a broader perspective than Hofstadter's biased urban views. In truthm, the Populists are one of American history's unfortunate losers; like the Loyalists and Native Americans, the Populists failed in almost all their immediate objectives; their leaders, like William Jennings Bryan and Tom Watson, are best remembered as lost crusaders. They lost because they were simply ahead of their time; they were New Dealers in a time when the New Deal was ignored and not accepted. The Populists lost in their present because their reforms were meant for the future; thus, at least the future should appreciate and judge the past correctly. Although Hofstadter writes an enthralling historical work, his unjust view of the Populists should not be taken by modern readers as absolute truth.

It's not every book that can change one's thinking about a political movement and a period in history, but Hofstadter's book did just that for me when I first read it many years ago. It's an incisive critique of the populist and progressive movements that sprang up in the last quarter of the 19th century and exerted strong influence on American politics until the onset of World War I. But Hofstadter's great achievement is that he sets both these movements in historical perspective, showing us that no movement flowers without roots.

Hofstadter is at his best in revealing that the populist movement played -- and preyed -- on the longing of Americans for a pastoral, agrarian past that was ironically little more than myth by the end of Reconstruction. In an increasingly industrial, urban America, the populists were able to set themselves up as downtrodden victims of various villians, chief among them the railroads and the banks.

Yet Hofstadter convincingly argues that the farmers of the West were eager to become businessmen in the boom years following the Civil War, when land and capital were cheap. It was not until they were battered by the economic slumps that are an inevitable part of a market economy that the agrarian movement began demanding government intervention to reign in capital and portraying agriculture as especially worthy of special attention.

The populist's appeal to the little man, dwarfed by powers beyond his control, played well in some segments of the U.S., but Hofstadter portrays a darker side of populism, exposing its anti-foreign and anti-Semitic leanings. Reading about the populist's railings against foreigners and their dark hints of conspiracy by vast economic and political powers, I heard echoes of the speeches of Pat Buchanan.

As for the progressives, the urban reformers who overlapped to some extent with the populists, Hofstadter cogently points out that this middle class movement was in large part a reaction to the growing influence of immigrants in large American cities. The middle class, he argues, was feeling squeezed between the waves of immigrants, who were increasingly catered to by machine politicians, and the new and enormously rich industrial class. The progressive movement was an attempt to wrest back some measure of political strength by undercutting the power of the bosses with "good government" and to reign in the economic clout of the industrialists through reform.

This is required reading for the student of American history. We have produced few historians who match the stature and achievement of Hofstadter, and this book is one of his best.

This is Hofstadter's study of trends in academic and social thought up to the 1950's, and it still deserves praise at a general level even though many of the particulars are no longer relevant. It's unfair to say that a book published way back in 1963 is outdated in the present day, so this can best be seen as a period piece, with a social history up to the point of writing. So it does function as a useful look at what was happening intellectually in the 1950's and early 60's.

Hofstadter's subject matter is the unique American disdain for intellectuals and eggheads - a term he actually uses several times, quite surprisingly for such an academic work. American folklore glamorizes the self-made man who conquers the challenges of nature, educating himself with experience - the school of hard knocks - as opposed to the isolated and condescending intellectual who has book smarts but no experience. At the time of writing, the end of the McCarthyist era, anti-intellectualism was especially strong and Hofstadter examines the history of this always shifting issue. He also makes the important distinction between intellectualism and intelligence. Folks usually distrust the former but still respect the latter. Some of Hofstadter's examinations seem highly irrelevant today, like the role of intellectualism in farming or organized labor, but his coverage of issues in public education (including the perennial evolution debate) is depressingly familiar. It seems some things never change.

The writing style is very academic, and dare I say intellectual, so it can be a struggle getting through Hofstadter's obscure issues and references that were more relevant back in 1963. However his political stance is very strong and levelheaded, and his examination of McCarthyism is surprisingly lucid. The only overall problem with this book is that Hofstadter keeps the anti-intellectualism issue at the academic or social-discourse level. There is no coverage of the effects of anti-intellectualism on real people and real social problems, as the fear and hatred of knowledge that was present both then and now can have very unfortunate effects for culture and society.

This classic analysis of anti-intellectualism is as fresh, powerful and revelatory as when it was first written almost forty years ago. The author demonstrates the importance of anti-intellectual impulses throughout American history in politics, religion, business and (perhaps most importantly)education. This is no mere curmudgenly rant, however. Hostadter tells a complex story in a remarkably fair, complete and generous manner. I finally got around to reading this book this summer. I wish I had read it years ago--it is so enormously helpful in making sense of all things American.

Before this book, I had never contemplated the differences between intelligence and intellectualism, but now, armed with Hofstadter's witty, sophisticated study, I can, with confidence, better survey our national landscape. Not only does the author reveal our anti-intellectual roots, he deconstructs the origins of our commitment to "practical knowledge." Whether it's religion or the business ethic, American culture has sanctioned and outwardly promoted a disdain for intellectual contemplation in favor of more "functional" learning that will (must), in the end, bring about conformity, commercialism, and commodification, NOT abstract thought. The book is a masterpiece and if there are any people left in this country who believe the mind is the last refuge of true freedom, it should serve as a revolutionary cry for all of us to follow.

This is an excellent and very well done anthology. Covering the classic readings, Croce, Plato, Ficino, Salsbury, Schelling, Dewey and others. The editors take space to introduce each selection and highlight its contribution to the field of Aesthetics. The selections are fair, even those including the existentialists, such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, who make large shifts in direction in Aesthetics. Hofstadter also contributes his own translation of Heidegger's selections and Schelling's selections. These are very good in particular.

The first difficulty is that the volume fails to point to advances beyond Heidegger. No volume can contain all the imporant classical and contemporary readings, but it should
have some sort of suggested reading list for newer materials. The problems of Aesthetics that have confronted the field since the 50's and 60's are just as important as the ones of ancient and medieval European culture. The problem of interpreting pure music (no lyrics) and its aesthetic effects in especially important to this field. Even Ayn Rand, who had a quick philosophical (if often flippant or facile) remark on any facet of culture, admitted she was confounded by the act of interpreting and judging pure music.

To address this, the reader should also read or purchase Arthur Danto's volumes. In particular Danto has articulated the main problems of the field (such as the problem of making value judgements) and set the tone. Problems such as ethnocentrism and cultural relativism in Western Aesthetics also need to be investigated by serious students of this topic.

Another issue to investigate that this volume misses is the category of the "Artist," which did not exist in ancient Greece or Rome as we know it today. In fact, the category of Artist, whether bohemian or otherwise, seems to be a fairly recent invention, and has had profound consequences for Aesthetics. To investigate this more, start by reading Flauber's novel "Sentimental Education." This staple of French literary realism will help jump start you past this anthology of philosophical readings.

This anthology of aesthetic texts surveys the key figures from the classic Western tradition in aesthetics beginning with Plato. Since the book's first pulbication in 1964, Hofstadter and Kuhns have been known among theoreticians, historians, and philosophers alike for this book's remarkable contribution to the field of aesthetics. In this book, one will find selections from the ancient Greeks: Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus; to the medieval: St. Augustine; to the Neoplatonist: Ficino; to the German Idealists: Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer; as well as others like: Shaftesbury, Croce, Nietzsche, Dewey, and Heidegger. This motley assortment is an indisputable must for every art historian, philosopher of art, literary critic, aesthetician, theoretician, and the general scholar. I would relish the opportunity at seeing a 21st century revision of this work; perhaps professor Kuhns may consider such a project with some of his brilliant collegues at Columbia University.

Normally, I can't stand revisionist history. It tends to sacrifice historical accuracy for political proselytizing. Howard Zinn's "Peoples' History of the United States" is a case in point: almost everything Zinn says seems dedicated to supporting the author's left-wing agenda.

Hofstadter's book neatly transcends this problem. It is most definitely revisionist. Each chapter examines a different American political leader, with a great deal of in-depth detail and criticism. However, Hofstadter escapes the political trap of mentioning only the negative or only the positive points about his subjects. Both sides are always examined in detail.

This evenhandedness results in a very interesting and useful text. Rather than heroes and villains, our past politicians come across as human beings, and very interesting ones at that.

A choice history text, both detailed and objective.

Richard Hofstadter, late professor at Columbia University, launched the Consensus school of history with his book, The American Political Tradition, and the Men Who Made It. Published on the heels of World War II, Hofstadter examines twelve central American political figures, mostly, but not all, presidents. Although originally written as twelve separate essays, Hofstadter binds all of his portraits together via common themes running throughout the work and enunciated in the Introduction. While the Consensus view of American history only held sway for a brief number of years, Hofstadter, rightully, continued to be considered one of the most brilliant historians in the country. The book is a classic of American history, one of the rare texts that both explores history, and is history.

The late Dr. Hofstadter published this book in 1948. It is a solid if not spectacular overview of American political thinking showing remarkable insight for the time it was published.

His subjects include the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Wendall Phillips, William Jennings Byran, Theodroe Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. He starts off with the founding fathers whose maxim was expressed in the words of John Jay:"the people who own the country ought to govern it," this refering, of course, to the wealthy minority which wrote the constitution in the first place. He shows that in large part throughout its history the factional battles in the country have been waged between two factions of poweful or at least relatively powerful interests: financiers and manufacturers against small farmers, small banks against big banks, Northern manufacturers and financiers against Southern feudal lords. The general population, though Hofstadter does not say this explicity, seem to have been largely bystanders. In his message to congress of December 1888, Grover Cleveland noted that:

We find the wealth and luxuries of our cities mingled with poverty and wretchedness and unremunerative toil. A crowded and constantly increasing urban population suggests the impoverishment of rural sections, and discontent with agricultural pursuits.... We discover that the fortunes realized by our manufacturers....result from the discriminating favor of the government and largely built upon unde exactions from the masses of our people. The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor.

He examines the rise of politicians co-opting radical forces and their ideas. William Jennings Bryan ran for election for president in 1896 as the country was trying to climb out of a severe recession and made almost the sole basis of his campaign "free silver" whereby the money supply could be increased by the coinage of silver along with gold and supposedly help the suffering farmers, which, of course, earned him much subsidy from the Western silver interests. He ignored the full advocacy of workers rights and the many ways which farmers were exploited by the railroads, middleman, tarrifs, etc. which had earned the Populist party a million votes for president in 1892. Theodore Roosevlt, while declaring in 1886 that he would like to get his cowboys together to go shoot down the Haymarket protestors, tried to maintain the status quo capitalism by increasing regulation of big business to save it from its own stupidity and greed and enacted some laws and engaged in some meaningless"trust bustings" (e.g. Northern Securities in 1903)to try to stave off popular discontent.

His portray of Woodrow Wilson is rather interesting. Throughout the book he engaged in laborious dissection of the personalities of the prime characters in this book trying to discover the basis for their policies. He portrays Woodrow Wilson with something bordering sympathy: an idealistic loner who was simply carried away by forces out of his control. The U.S. got out of the recession of 1914 by supplying the allies in World War one with war materials. Thus American business developed a substantial interest in seeing the allies prevail, even when the British were enaging in extensive harrassment of American shipping; Wilson kept silent over this but, of course, got into a hot lather over sea violations by Germany which was being strangled to death by the British navy. He portrays Wilson as being deeply disturbed at having to enter the war and feared for what Hofstadter vaguely refers to as an attack on the constitution. I think he is refering to the red scare and anti-german hysteria launched by the Wilson administration; the jailing of Eugene Debs by the man whom one of the reviewers below oddly terms one of the "liberal icons of the left."--I have a feeling that the reviewer knows little about the actual "left." Anyway Hofstadter discusses Wilson's idealistic efforts during the Versailles treaty, severely handicapped by the European powers. Of course, one might ask, though Hofstadter does not, what Wilson was doing as he was reinstituing virtual slavery in Haiti and conducting an extremely racist and brutal occupation of the Dominican Republic.

Anyway Hofstadter ends with a discussion of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. The "prosperity" of the 1920's with its unrestrained capitalist economic policies created the usual conditions for a depression (sort of similar to current times): saturated markets leading to speculative bubbles, debt ridden export markets, consumer spending unable to keep pace with the expanding economy and so on. Once the depression came on, Hoover rigidly preached rugged individualism and self-reliance to the poor people clamoring for federal government relief, something that he had not preached to big business while handing out subsidies and exorbitant tax breaks while secretary of commerce in the Harding and Coolidge administrations. Anyway, he got kicked and Franklin Roosevelt came in and took off the rough edges of the depression but did not actually end it (indeed it reappeared strongly in 1937-38 after the administration's austerity program) until World War two economic policies were implemented.

Granted that Prof. Hofstadter's evaluation of the "pseudo-conservatism" of the Goldwater campaign is rather patronizing, and that, too optimistically, he predicted that the paranoid style was condemned to permanent minority status. Otherwise, the book is a prescient and devastating analysis of the breathless mindset on display, mainly from the Right, over the last ten years or so. Just last November right-wing commentators as bright and well-educated as George F. Will were fulminating against Gore's "slow-motion coup" in Florida, and lesser conservatives were passing the word that President Clinton was about to seize dictatorial powers. The fact that the most conservative president since Reagan--maybe since the Roaring 20s--is currently sitting in the Oval Office, courtesy of a hypocritical decision by a quintet of conservative Supreme Court justices, means nothing to the conservatives immersed in the paranoid style. THEY didn't subvert the system; they saved the U.S. from the liberals, the liberals, the liberals.

Back in 1964, Prof. Hofstadter noted that people who think like this tend to imitate the massive conspiracies they imagine threatening themselves. Writing in an era that still resembled the stereotypical 1950s more than the stereotypical 1960s, Hofstadter did not forsee the current power of the paranoid style. But the title essay of his book nails it right to the wall. Reading it, I feared for my country.

During the fifties, and up to the time of his death in the sixties, Richard Hofstadter was one of America's most renowned historians with two Pulitzer Prizes to his credit. He was at his intellectual peak when, as one of America's eminent authorities of his country's political ideologies, he tackled the developing phenomenon of the early sixties' right wing extremism under the guise of conservatism. He differentiates between the traditional American conservatism espoused by the likes of President Herbert Hoover and Senator Robert Taft alongside the venom of Robert Welch's John Birch Society, in which, as the group's idea man, Welch referred to Dwight D. Eisenhower as a "dedicated and conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy."

Hoftstadter delineates how fringe rightist elements took over the Republican Party and rallied behind the banner of Arizona's Senator Barry M. Goldwater, resulting in one of the party's most calamitous losses in the 1964 presidential election against incumbent Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson.

The work has a timely ring as an historical analytical measuring rod in comprehending the activities of current right wing movements, such as the Christian Right behind the banners of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and its link to the militant anti-abortion movement, alongside earlier rightist political philosophies and their vigorous adherents such as Welch and television commentator Dan Smoot.

Though wacky folks here and there may be offended by Hofstadter, social and political scientists recognize this work as the perennial analysis of American paranoia as a social phenomenon.

What with the current flap in Florida over the Presidential election, and the concomitant party posturing, I pulled down this book to get some perspective on the silliness of political parties. But, in a low-key way, the author leads me to believe that our system is pretty good.

This is not a book that analyzes the system of political parties-not a book of political science, in other words. It is a targeted history, which confines itself nicely to a single question: how did our current system of two major political parties arise?

I had read the book about ten years ago, and found it unmemorable. I liked it better this time, perhaps because the issue it discusses (that is, why there should be political parties, and in particular, why two of them) interests me more these days. Basically, Hofstadter contrasts the traditional views of party that Jefferson and Madison espoused, with more or less consistency at various times, with what came later-particularly through Martin van Buren and his ilk. Under the Founders parties tended to be factions in legislatures loyal to particular elites. Fairly soon, though, and under the force of necessity, they came to embrace the common man (later yet, woman), and changed character.

What is most interesting in this story is that parties were never planned for by those that designed our government, but it is unlikely it could have endured for more than a few years without them. Moreover, the current party situation, with two dead-even opponents of vague ideology but who agree to play by the rules, is probably about the best any democracy can hope for. We have plenty of examples in the world where ideology trumps civility, and party strife easily jumps over into violence. Not much chance of a persistent democracy there!

This book is an easy read for non-historians, as is appropriate in its origin as Jefferson Memorial Lectures. And it is pleasant to come out of a history book with a grasp of anything, however limited.