Proverbs Are The Best Policy: Folk Wisdom And American Politics

Mieder introduces this survey with an examination of what characterizes American proverbs, what are their origins, and how they have spread internationally with the expansion of America's political role. He then turns to the origins and varied historical uses of what has become the defining proverb of American democracy, "government of the people, by the people, for the people." The employment of proverbs had no brighter exponent among the nation's founding generation than Abigail Adams, wh...