Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, "The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History" (Oxford UP, 2019)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Feb 28, 2019 · 1h 4m

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a sweeping examination of the key ideas that have infused American society. Moving across borders, time, and within American culture the author gives a well-written and spirited account of why ideas matter. Beginning with how the name “America” came to be in the mind of European empires in the sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century when globalization, another form of empire, was on the minds of Americans. Along the way Ratner-Rosenhagen, offers a tour through early…