 | REFORM IN AMERICA identifies three principal streams of reform advocacy in American history. Politico-economic issues, the mainstream of reform, are exemplified by a detailed study of politics of money from 1832 to 1913.
Reform on behalf of special groups, the second major category, is illuminated by the examples of movements on behalf of blacks and women and by examination of the civil liberties and civil rights movements. A third category is established by connecting communitarianism, utopianism, and visionary planning to form a tradition through which ideal alternatives are offered to the existing social order. The Reform Spirit in America contains over one hundred documents that are used by the author to
demonstrate that reform in America has been a generally continuous activity. This remarkable anthology is the perfect tool for understanding the immense and complicated subject of the American pursuit of economic equality, political democracy, social justice, and full citizenship for all. | | | | | "...enlarges and deepens our understanding of reform in its most comprehensive sense by sophisticated analysis of the components, structure, and functions of social protest and action and by bold, imaginative synthesis...will
influence all scholars concerned with reform and it should influence all other historians. I nominate it for a Pulitzer Award which it richly deserves." -- Merle Curti. |
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