TY - GEN T1 - Almost chosen people : oblique biographies in the American grain A1 - Zuckerman, Michael, 1939- LA - English PP - Berkeley PB - University of California Press YR - 1993 UL - https://ebooks.jgu.edu.in/Record/jstor_eba_ocm44962259 AB - For a quarter of a century, Michael Zuckerman has been provoking - and sometimes almost seducing - his fellow historians to rethink their most cherished assumptions about the American past. Often he starts from a familiar figure or a hallowed interpretation. Always he disguises the familiar, hollows out the hallowed, rearranges what is left, provides a capacious but unexpected context, and emerges with a breathtakingly new conception of an old problem. In his effort to remake the meaning of the American tradition, Zuckerman takes the entire sweep of American history for his province. The essays in this collection - including two never before published and a new autobiographical introduction - range from early New England settlements to the corridors of modern Washington. Among his subjects are Puritans and Southern gentry, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Spock, Horatio Alger and Lewis Mumford, P.T. Barnum and Ronald Reagan. Writing of scammers and scoundrels, of racists and rebels, and of the purest genius, Zuckerman aims to capture the character of the country, its inner impulsion and its vagrant passions. OP - 315 NO - "A Centennial book"--Page preceeding title page CN - E169.1 .Z883 1993eb SN - 9780520909281 SN - 0520909283 SN - 0585116768 SN - 9780585116761 SN - 9780520066519 SN - 0520066510 KW - National characteristics, American. KW - United States : Civilization. KW - United States : Biography. KW - États-Unis : Civilisation. KW - États-Unis : Biographies. KW - HISTORY : State & Local : General. KW - HISTORY : United States : General. KW - Civilization KW - National characteristics, American KW - United States KW - Biographies KW - Biographies. ER -