The Ideas that Made America
The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History is an exciting exploration of American history by way of vibrant and powerful ideas, thinkers, texts, and intellectual institutions. Written by one of the most distinguished intellectual historians of her generation, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen takes a chronological approach, beginning with the first explorers and settlers in the New World up to the 21st century. Ratner-Rosenhagen shows how ideas have been a major force in American history, driving movements such as transcendentalism, Social Darwinism, conservatism, and postmodernism.
Presented in partnership with The Madison Institute.
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is Merle Curti Associate Professor and Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches US intellectual and cultural history. She is the author of the prize-wining American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (2012), and her co-edited volumes include Protest on the Page: Essays on Print and the Cultures of Dissent (2015) with James Danky and the late James Baughman, and The Worlds of American Intellectual History (2016) with Joel Isaac, James Kloppenberg, and the late Michael O'Brien.