Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism

Add to Wishlist

Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism

eBook

$17.99 ~~$26.95~~ Save 33%

eBook
$17.99 ~~$26.95~~ Save 33% Current price is $17.99, Original price is $26.95. You Save 33%.

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.

WANT A NOOK? Explore Now

Buy As Gift

Related collections and offers

Overview

Americans honor the flag with a fervor seen in few other countries: The Stars and Stripes decorate American homes and businesses; wave over sports events and funerals; and embellish everything from politicians' lapels to the surface of the moon.

But what does the flag mean? In Capture the Flag, historian Woden Teachout reveals that it has held vastly different meanings over time. It has been claimed by both the right and left; by racists and revolutionaries; by immigrants and nativists. In tracing the political history of the flag from its origins in the American Revolution through the present day, Teachout demonstrates that the shifting symbolism of the flag reveals a broader shift in the definition of American patriotism.

A story of a nation in search of itself, Capture the Flag offers a probing account of the flag that has become America's icon.

Product Details
About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786744763
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/26/2009
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	355 KB
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Woden Teachout holds a PhD in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University. She has taught at Harvard and Middlebury and is currently Professor of Graduate Studies at Union Institute&University. She lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

An exploration of the history and symbolism of the American flag. During the 2008 presidential campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama invoked the flag during speeches, demonstrating the durability of Old Glory as a national symbol. Teachout gives context to such political use, pointing out that it was Mark Hanna, William McKinley's campaign manager, who was the first to effectively co-opt the flag as a political tool. One 1896 McKinley campaign button had no name or picture of the candidate-just the Stars and Stripes. Teachout shows that debate over the flag reaches all the way back to the founding of the United States, noting that it has been used for various, sometimes contradictory, ends: "It asks us to understand the varied impulses of American patriotism, to reexamine categories of ‘right' and left'-both of which have at one time or another laid claim to the flag-and to reacquaint ourselves with our shared American values." In 1844, anti-immigration rioters used the flag as a symbol of white, Protestant, native-born citizens, and groups as disparate as the Ku Klux Klan and civil-rights protesters have claimed the flag as their symbol. The first American flag, hoisted on the rigging of a warship in December 1775, was a flag of rebellion. During the Civil War, Union soldiers sang dozens of anti-rebel songs about the flag. The events of 9/11 reignited the debate, and Teachout makes the case that its widespread use illustrates the depth of patriotism-however it's interpreted-in American society. "To fly the flag," he writes, "is to stake an active claim to the promise of an American dream that draws its inspiration from the founders and is continuously renewed."A slim but cogenthistorical examination of America's most potent symbol.

Kirkus Reviews

James Patterson, author of Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy
“Displaying a fine eye and narrative skill in recounting key episodes—among them the Revolution, nativist riots, the bombardment of Fort Sumter, civil rights activism, and the New York City hard hat riot of 1970—Woden Teachout reminds us of how important the American flag has been as a symbol for a wide variety of patriotic causes.”
Wall Street Journal
“…[A] lively account of the flag's polymorphous and evolving meanings. ‘Capture the Flag' reads like a sort of historical Bildungsroman, a 200-year-long coming-of-age saga in which its innocent protagonist matures from a patched-together sailors' standard to the uniquely potent symbol freighted with the hopes, dreams and expectations that it bears today.” “If the flag's history offers any lessons, and Ms. Teachout argues convincingly in this provocative book that it does, the battle for the flag's meaning is unlikely to end soon, if ever.”
Washington Times
“…Ms. Teachout's analysis will help people understand all kinds of patriotism in their broader context.”
Ken Burns
“No symbol of our nation carries as much emotional resonance as Old Glory, and as Americans of every era have struggled over how to tap that emotion for their own cause, no symbol has both united and divided us quite so passionately. In this penetrating history, Woden Teachout demonstrates that our shifting uses — and misuses — of the flag tell us more about ourselves and our times than about the Stars and Stripes meant to rally us together.”
Rick Shenkman, author of Just How Stupid Are We?
“The mystery of how a simple piece of cloth bearing stripes and stars has been infused with deep meaning by Americans as different as the white robed men of the Ku Klux Klan and liberals like Bill Moyers is unraveled in this fine, thoughtful history of the flag.”
David D. Hall, Bartlett Research Professor of New England Church History, Harvard Divinity School
“A wonderfully accomplished narrative that will surprise every reader in showing how the flag as emblem of patriotism has been emphasized and ignored, contested and affirmed. This is good history that offers lessons for our own times.”
Ted Widmer, author of Arc of the Liberties: America and the World
“With eloquence, passion and deep scholarly research, Woden Teachout illuminates the most American subject of them all.

From the Publisher

Related collections and offers

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Related Subjects

Customer Reviews