The Ideas That Made America

Drawing on a variety of discourses, from religion, philosophy, and political thought, to cultural criticism, social theory, and the arts,The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History shows how ideas have been major forces in American history, driving movements such as transcendentalism, Social Darwinism, conservatism, and postmodernism.

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of History and Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches U.S. intellectual and cultural history. She is the author of the prize-wining American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (2012). 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. Her next book project is a history of wisdom in 20th-century American thought and culture.