The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History (Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen book)
Published 2022-08-01.
An excellent primer on post-colonial American intellectual history. Ratner-Rosenhagen does a great job of contextualizing and explaining the thinkers and works I’d already heard of, while also directing my attention to other perspectives (especially non-white and non-male), both where sources exist and where they don’t. She’s also a really, really good writer. I often found myself pausing to savor particular paragraphs or turns of phrase. In that sense, this book delivered more than I bargained for.