Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age / Edition 1 available in Paperback, eBook
Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age / Edition 1
- ISBN-10:
- 0674002016
- ISBN-13:
- 9780674002012
- Pub. Date:
- 05/19/2000
- Publisher:
- Harvard University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0674002016
- ISBN-13:
- 9780674002012
- Pub. Date:
- 05/19/2000
- Publisher:
- Harvard University Press
Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age / Edition 1
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Overview
On a narrative canvas that sweeps across Europe and the United States, Daniel Rodgers retells the story of the classic era of efforts to repair the damages of unbridled capitalism. He reveals the forgotten international roots of such innovations as city planning, rural cooperatives, modernist architecture for public housing, and social insurance, among other reforms. From small beginnings to reconstructions of the new great cities and rural life, and to the wide-ranging mechanics of social security for working people, Rodgers finds the interconnections, adaptations, exchanges, and even rivalries in the Atlantic region's social planning. He uncovers the immense diffusion of talent, ideas, and action that were breathtaking in their range and impact.
The scope of Atlantic Crossings is vast and peopled with the reformers, university men and women, new experts, bureaucrats, politicians, and gifted amateurs. This long durée of contemporary social policy encompassed fierce debate, new conceptions of the role of the state, an acceptance of the importance of expertise in making government policy, and a recognition of a shared destiny in a newly created world.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780674002012 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Harvard University Press |
Publication date: | 05/19/2000 |
Edition description: | New Edition |
Pages: | 648 |
Product dimensions: | 6.38(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.25(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Prologue
Paris, 1900
World of Iron
Explaining Social Politics
The Atlantic World
Landscapes
Progressive Politics
Twilight of Laissez-Faire
Natural Acts and Social Desires
Professing Economics
The Self-Owned City
The Collectivism of Urban Life
Cities on a Hill
Civic Ambitions
Private Property, Public Designs
"City Planning in Justice to the Working Population"
The Wage Earners' Risks
Workingmen's Insurance
Fields of Interest
War Collectivism
Europe, 1914
Society "More or Less Molten"
Rural Reconstruction
Cooperative Farming
Island Communities
The Machine Age
The American Invasion of Europe
The Politics of Modernism
New Deal
The Intellectual Economy of Catastrophe
Solidarity Imagined
London, 1942
The Plan to Abolish Want
The Phoenix of Exceptionalism
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
What People are Saying About This
Atlantic Crossings, Daniel Rodgers's monumental new account of progressive politics in the United States and Europe from 1870 to 1940, could not have been more timely. A spirited challenge to conventional interpretations of American progressive politics, Rodgers's book evokes a forgotten period when big government was respected, and when America borrowed blueprints for building activist governments from Europe. Therein lies Rodgers's central challenge to prevailing interpretations of American progressive politics: his argument that reform was a European import, not a wholly indigenous creation. The book's interpretive innovation is the result of an ambitious methodological departure. Rather than limiting his scope to American-born progressives, Rodgers opens up his study to include the vast network of cosmopolitan intellectuals responsible for the formation of progressive policies in Germany, England, France, Australia, and Sweden. To understand American progressivism, Rodgers boldly insists, one must comprehend the transatlantic world of ideas and political experimentation that helped shape it...The book's thesis itself is a thing of considerable dexterity, a rare combination of clarity and complexity.
Atlantic Crossings is a stunning intellectual achievement. By exploring the trans Atlantic context of reform ideas, as well as the connection between those ideas and the nitty gritty of political practice, Daniel Rodgers forces us to re-think the entire Progressive era and all its tangled legacies. This is a deeply researched, passionately argued, and beautifully written work of comparative history. Anyone interested in the history--and future--of the American reform tradition, the welfare state, or social democracy needs to read and learn from this magnificent book.
Daniel Czitrom, Mount Holyoke College
Atlantic Crossings, Daniel Rodgers's monumental new account of progressive politics in the United States and Europe from 1870 to 1940, could not have been more timely. A spirited challenge to conventional interpretations of American progressive politics, Rodgers's book evokes a forgotten period when big government was respected, and when America borrowed blueprints for building activist governments from Europe. Therein lies Rodgers's central challenge to prevailing interpretations of American progressive politics: his argument that reform was a European import, not a wholly indigenous creation. The book's interpretive innovation is the result of an ambitious methodological departure. Rather than limiting his scope to American-born progressives, Rodgers opens up his study to include the vast network of cosmopolitan intellectuals responsible for the formation of progressive policies in Germany, England, France, Australia, and Sweden. To understand American progressivism, Rodgers boldly insists, one must comprehend the transatlantic world of ideas and political experimentation that helped shape it...The book's thesis itself is a thing of considerable dexterity, a rare combination of clarity and complexity.
David S. Sampliner, Dissent
This is a large and important book on a large and important subject. For all the current talk of globalization and interdependence, the United Sates is probably a more self-absorbed and inward-looking country today than it has ever been. As Daniel Rodgers clearly demonstrates, many Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries looked to Europe for ideas and models as they sought to confront the problems created by industrialization and urbanization. This massively researched and beautifully written study not only provides authoritative and careful analyses of the influence of German economists upon American progressives and the complexities of social insurance but also broadens the scope of "reform" by telling the story of the movements for city planning, rural cooperatives and modernist architecture. Throughout, Rodgers deftly points out the particular ways in which the peculiarities of the American environment shaped the fate of the various ideas and institutions that were brought across the Atlantic. In its scope and originality, this work brilliantly illuminates a lost dimension of recent American history and will confirm Daniel Rodgers' reputation as one of today's leading historians.
John A. Thompson, St. Catharine's College, Cambridge
A compelling narrative and a historical argument of great and lasting importance. It will be an enduring masterpiece.
[A] remarkable book...This is a big book not only in size but significance...It is a brilliant combination of intellectual and political history...It is probably the most important book written on the twentieth century in a decade at least...Because of the international perspective he takes, every subject Rodgers touches--from urban reform, to social insurance, rationalization, and more--is advanced, often significantly recast.
Thomas Bender, New York University