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Andrew Hartman

A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars Hardcover – April 14, 2015

by Andrew Hartman (Author)

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When Patrick Buchanan took the stage at the Republican National Convention in 1992 and proclaimed, “There is a religious war going on for the soul of our country,” his audience knew what he was talking about: the culture wars, which had raged throughout the previous decade and would continue until the century’s end, pitting conservative and religious Americans against their liberal, secular fellow citizens. It was an era marked by polarization and posturing fueled by deep-rooted anger and insecurity.

Buchanan’s fiery speech marked a high point in the culture wars, but as Andrew Hartman shows in this richly analytical history, their roots lay farther back, in the tumult of the 1960s―and their significance is much greater than generally assumed. Far more than a mere sideshow or shouting match, the culture wars, Hartman argues, were the very public face of America’s struggle over the unprecedented social changes of the period, as the cluster of social norms that had long governed American life began to give way to a new openness to different ideas, identities, and articulations of what it meant to be an American. The hot-button issues like abortion, affirmative action, art, censorship, feminism, and homosexuality that dominated politics in the period were symptoms of the larger struggle, as conservative Americans slowly began to acknowledge―if initially through rejection―many fundamental transformations of American life.

As an ever-more partisan but also an ever-more diverse and accepting America continues to find its way in a changing world, A War for the Soul of America reminds us of how we got here, and what all the shouting has really been about.

Print length

384 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Chicago Press
Publication date

April 14, 2015
Dimensions

6.25 x 0.75 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

022625450X
ISBN-13

978-0226254500
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A lively chronicle. . . . Mr. Hartman's book makes two major contributions. The first is his framing of the ‘culture wars’ debate from its earliest days. . . . His second major contribution is his conclusion that the culture wars are over." ― Wall Street Journal

"As a guide to the late twentieth-century culture wars, Hartman is unrivalled. . . . Incisive portraits of individual players in the culture wars dramas. . . . Reading Hartman sometimes feels like debriefing with friends after a raucous night out, an experience punctuated by laughter, head-scratching, and moments of regret for the excesses involved." ― New Republic

"A provocative review of a formative epoch." ― Booklist

"A valuable addition to the growing body of literature historicizing the post-Sixties era. . . . Classic intellectual history. . . . Thoughtful and thought-provoking." ― Library Journal

"An unparalleled guide . . . making sense of the polarized politics that have plagued the USA for the past four decades. . . . Hartman's central point is that the debates were deadly serious, asking fundamental questions abotu who we are as a nation, and about who we want to be. . . . In his efforts to provide an overview and explanation of the culture wars, Hartman is to date without peer." -- Kevin M. Schultz ― The Sixties

"Hartman's text is nothing less than required reading on the culture wars, their history, and their impact on American public life." -- L. Benjamin Rolsky ― H-Net Reviews

"The frist book to tell the story of this war in all its diversity. . . . Hartman, to his credit, insists that the issues at stake in cultural politics are 'real and compelling.' . . . His affections clearly rest with the liberals, but he is generally nonpoloemical in his accounts of the two sides." ― Christian Century

"Andrew Hartman has worked with a deft hand and a keen mind to give us an absorbing account of the last half-century of culture wars in the United States. By digging far beneath the cross-fire style of political rhetoric that bombards us today, Hartman shows how the seismic changes in American society, most notably in the struggle to create a more equal and inclusive democracy, unleashed a fierce conservative attempt to hold on to a world that was escaping their grip." -- Gary Nash, author of History on Trial

"Whatever happened to the culture wars? Americans don't argue the way they used to, at least not over hot-button cultural issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. Andrew Hartman has produced both a history and a eulogy, providing a new and compelling explanation for the rise and fall of the culture wars. But don't celebrate too soon. On the ashes of the culture wars, we've built a bleak and acquisitive country dedicated to individual freedom over social democracy. Anyone who wants to take account of the culture wars--or to wrestle with their complicated legacy--will also have to grapple with this important book." -- Jonathan Zimmerman, author of Whose America?

"A War for the Soul of America illuminates the most contentious issues of the last half of the twentieth century. In lively, elegant prose, Andrew Hartman explains how and why the consensus that appeared to permeate the nation following World War II frayed and fractured so dramatically in the 1960s. With keen insight and analysis, he shows that the Culture Wars were not marginal distractions from the main issues of the day. Rather, they were profound struggles over the very foundation of what it meant to be an American. In tracing the history of those conflicts over the last half of the twentieth century, Hartman provides a new understanding of the tensions and processes that transformed the nation." -- Elaine Tyler May, author of America and the Pill

"Hartman's richly researched intellectual history makes a major contribution by taking late twentieth century conservative political culture seriously. A War for the Soul of America is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the fierceness with which so many Americans continue to defend themselves against feminism, immigration, gay rights and racial equality in the twenty-first century as well." -- Claire Bond Potter, The New School

"The culture wars were about more than porn, rap lyrics, and Piss Christ, Andrew Hartman shows in A War for the Soul of America. They were fundamentally about divergent visions of national life. This is a lucid and powerful book that explains much about our own time." -- David Sehat, author of The Jefferson Rule

"There is no shortage of great books about post-1960s American political culture. Andrew Hartman’s history of the culture wars ranks among the best. Hartman manages to transcend the worldviews of
his subjects, other than to confirm the existence of the culture wars as a distinct moment in American history. His is not the final word on that moment. It is, however, among the most reliable accounts thus far." ― American Historical Review

About the Author

Andrew Hartman is associate professor of history at Illinois State University and the author of Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; 1st edition (April 14, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 022625450X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226254500
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.34 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.75 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,816,615 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,693 in History & Theory of Politics
- #70,326 in United States History (Books)

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4.3 74 ratings

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Andrew Hartman

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Andrew Hartman is Professor of History at Illinois State University, where he teaches courses in U.S. intellectual, cultural, and political history, as well as courses in the philosophy of history, historiography, and pedagogy. His first book, Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008. Hartman’s second book, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015 and has been widely reviewed in popular and academic journals ranging from The Wall Street Journal and New Republic to the American Historical Review. Hartman is currently at work on his third book, Marx and America, which is being represented by the John Wright Literary Agency.

Hartman was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark for the 2013-14 academic year, and is an Organization of American Historians (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer for the 2015-2018 period. He was the founding President of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History (S-USIH), and he continues to write for the Society’s award-winning blog. Hartman has been published in a host of academic and popular venues, including The American Historian, The Journal of American Studies, Reviews in American History, Journal of Policy History, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Salon, Jacobin, Bookforum, and In These Times. Hartman received his BA in History from the University of New Mexico (1994) and his PhD in History from the George Washington University (2006). Prior to attending graduate school, he taught high school history in his hometown Denver.

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Roy E Olson

An Important Book for Anyone and Everyone

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 19, 2015

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In their commentary on the direction contemporary historiography, The Future of Class in America, Geoff Eley and Keith Nield write "finding ways to move between a more Foucauldian register and the more structuralist registers of analysis of politics, we believe, has become an urgent task of historiography." Dr. Hartman's book on the culture wars ascribes to this plea, providing readers with a cultural history that still manages to observe and unravel the structural complications that have contributed to America's current tumult.

As a trained historian and current high school instructor, I love "A War for the Soul of America" both for its scholarly contribution to the topic and its usability in a high school classroom. Regarding the scholarly achievements of the book, A War for the Soul of America brings a much needed historical framework to the topic of the culture wars. Not only does Dr. Hartman historicize the problem in a manner no authors have yet to do, but he manages to deal with such a wide range of complicated historiography in a manner that is digestible to readers that are not trained historians. Supplementing historical events with short summaries of their importance, and synthesizing incredibly complex historical arguments with the utmost grace and readability. For instance, Hartman's deep commitment to understanding the ideas that have contribute to the culture wars shines through with his discussion of historians and philosophers such as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. Dr. Hartman has provided an excellent piece of work should be enjoyed by anyone wishing to understand the current state of affairs.

This book is so readable, that I assigned parts of it to an Advanced Placement High School classroom and they read it with enjoyment. It was the perfect way to preface a discussion of the 1950s and would work well with any and all lessons that are centered around cultural lessons pertaining to the latter half of the twentieth century. In addition to the students, history teachers of all walks of life should read this book as the last two chapters that deal explicitly with the culture wars and its wide reaching implications on the classroom.

Dr. Hartman's A War for the Soul of America provides a fair treatment of our contemporary social and political issues. While implicating neo-conservatives for trying anything to keep the grasp on their ever dwindling power, Dr. Hartman leaves no rock unturned and by no means implicates only those on the right. Dr. Hartman's book is a testament to the worth of history and committed historians that seek to instill agency in the public.

8 people found this helpful

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Donald Earl Collins

Please read, and read well!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 6, 2015

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My friend and colleague Andrew Hartman has done it again, with a wonderful book digging down past the weeds into the intellectual and political underpinnings of the so-called Culture Wars of the late-twentieth century. I would write more, but I want to take my time to give it the full-blown positive review that A War for the Soul of America deserves. I would say this, though. Anyone interested in how a simple change in a US history curriculum could lead to rabid responses from established conservative in 2014 and 2015 should read this book to trace the of such anti-education and intellectual origins back at least to the Cold War, and especially the 1950s and the Red Scare. Any history student interested in post-1945 US intellectual history that isn't just about the rise of liberalism should read this book. And anyone who wants to understand the contradictions within the thinking of the various intellectual components of the culture wars (from a conservative -- or rather, neoconservative -- perspective) should pick up Professor Hartman's book and read it.

5 people found this helpful

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Dr. L.

All in all I enjoyed Andrew Hartman's book A War for the Soul of ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 29, 2016

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All in all I enjoyed Andrew Hartman's book A War for the Soul of America. It refreshed my memory about many of the issues we all lived through in the 60s through the 90s. Hartman discusses many areas of controversy from these times: religion, race, gender, education, politics and more. The writing is good and the factual detail he presents is prolific.

The main flaw of the book--and it is a big one--is that the leftist bias of the author comes through in too many places. This of course makes one wonder if one is getting a fair look at all of the topics he covers in the book. For instance, in the one area I know something about--whether or not the bombing of Hiroshima was necessary--Hartman only presents revisionist historical arguments. He does not quote any of the many experts who present evidence showing that the bombing was absolutely necessary to save hundreds of thousands of American lives and millions of Japanese lives. So given this one area of distortion that I can verify, I have to wonder how distorted his presentation of other topics is.

Almost any reader whose politics are to the left of center will enjoy this book. More conservative-minded individuals will have to read the book with many grains of salt--and still will come away feeling that the presentation was biased and thus not convincing.

Henry Lerner,
Newton, MA

13 people found this helpful

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S Hayes

A very meaty book that challenges mainstream ideas about the forces that shaped the American experience in the 20th century

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 12, 2015

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I'm not an academic, and I'm not a liberal, but I enjoyed this work a great deal. Professor Hartman tackles the timely subject of the culture wars with a fair and balanced approach that is sadly missing from most discourse on polarizing issues like feminism, affirmative action, and gender norms. My favorite aspect of the book was how, by using quotes from guys like Buckley and Krauthammer as examples of conservative thought, he gave the impression that, although he disagrees with conservatism, he at least spent the time to find the most compelling arguments to contrast with the words of his liberal champions. And the quotes of intellectuals like Henry Louis Gates Jr. then helped correct more than a few negative opinions I had held about topics such as Ebonics and Afrocentrism
It doesn't matter where you fall on the political spectrum. As opposed to the current climate of gotcha journalism on tv and partisan essays in print that only divide Americans, this book equips the reader with the tools to engage in the intelligent discussions that our country needs to progress. This should be the goal of every American (and world citizen).

48 people found this helpful

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