High-concept cultural history at its provocative best. Lears is a polymath and Big Thinker.
A remarkable book. . . . As Jackson Lears demonstrates again, he is one of the best of his (and my) generation of historians.
Jackson Lears is one of the few pre-eminent historians of our time. As we dream for a rebirth of America in the age of Obama, this magnificent and magisterial book on the making of modern America could not be more timely. Don’t miss it!
In Rebirth of a Nation, Jackson Lears, our most stimulating historian of American culture, outdoes himself, offering a stunning interpretive synthesis on politics, culture, and social upheaval in the pivotal half-century when ideals of regeneration assumed their modern shape, sometimes as imperial bombast, sometimes as designs for reform.
Jackson Lears is a formidable, compellingly original cultural and intellectual historian. . . . Rebirth of a Nation is Lears’ most ambitious work yet, and it builds brilliantly on his earlier projects. . . . Lears’ convincing new narrative of this pivotal half century never falters.
Jackson Lears, America’s premier cultural historian, has written the smartest and most illuminating survey of this roaring, perplexing era since Richard Hofstadter’s The Age of Reform.
Jackson Lears has become the historian of American yearning. . . . He excels at the miniature portrait, and his richly associative imagination enables him to make telling use of the Cecil B. De Mille-sized case he assembled for Rebirth of a Nation.
In this sweeping and charged history, Jackson Lears brilliantly evokes a defining era in American history. He recasts what we have blandly called the ‘Gilded Age,’ revealing a time of profound change, sharp conflict, and enduring consequence.
Rebirth of a Nation is dazzling cultural history: smart, provocative and gripping. It is also a book for our times, historically grounded, hopeful and filled with humane, just and peaceful possibilities.
The Washington Post
…a fascinating cultural history…Rebirth of a Nation is a major work by a leading historian at the top of his gameat once engaging and tightly argued. Like the best histories, it is also a book that speaks to our own time.
The New York Times
Lears (history, Rutgers Univ., Something for Nothing: Luck in America) examines the underpinnings of U.S. regeneration after the Civil War from both individual and national standpoints. For example, he shows that individuals, enabled by the Young Men's Christian Association, took part in physical fitness to transform themselves, while on the national level Southern white supremacists renewed themselves by reversing Reconstruction with their Jim Crow laws. Throughout, Lears also notes how militarism itself can be an agent of change and how Protestant Christianity added the important moral spark for regeneration. The latter insight is not new, and Lears is at his best when talking about militarism. As the Civil War faded from memory, the country looked for new wars, such as the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, to create its heroes. Lears argues that this militarism still functions today, especially after 9/11. This is not a narrative history but more of an intellectual analysis geared to students and scholars and recommended for such readers.
Bryan Craig
A cultural historian looks at America's "age of regeneration" between the end of the Civil War and World War I. The end of Reconstruction in 1877 also marked the beginning of decades of social and economic upheaval that transformed the nation from a sleepy republic to a world power. From the Civil War's widespread destruction emerged an intense longing for rebirth. Lears (History/Rutgers Univ.; Something for Nothing: Luck in America, 2003, etc.) presents this struggle between farmers and bankers, workers and industrialists, pacifists and militarists, immigrants and nativists, as a battle for the nation's soul. During this contentious period the noble Republican Party of Lincoln become the captive of big business, while the old bugaboo of race kept Northern and Southern Democrats from mobilizing an effective opposition. In richly allusive and lively prose, Lears explains how the desire for reconciliation among whites was achieved at the price of equal rights for blacks and a reign of racial terror. He examines how the populist dream of a cooperative commonwealth ultimately yielded to the elite cult of manliness and militarism, the pervasive power of capital and a managerial and political class convinced that the nation's road to renewal ran through empire. The author's cast of characters ranges from the unexpected-Harry Houdini, Buffalo Bill-to the predictable array of Gilded Age villains-mainly Morgan, Rockefeller and Carnegie. Lears clearly sympathizes with the idealists and dreamers determined to wrest meaning from the Civil War's awful sacrifice. He cites the work and commentary of people like Jane Addams, Mark Twain, William James and Eugene Debs. For him, Teddy Roosevelt was amonster and Woodrow Wilson a tragic figure, overwhelmed by dark forces. Though the author's take on the era is partisan, readers need not agree with his politics to appreciate the high style and obvious passion he brings to this difficult subject. Large-scale history with an intimate touch.