Here are summaries of works cited in culturism whose bibliography entry was preceeded by an asterisk. Also included are books not referred to in culturism which are of interest. Being long, some are best read after printing. I apologize for the variations in quality.
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U.S. HISTORY
"Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780 – 1860" covers what the title promises. It is by Carl F. Kaestle.
"Institutional Individualism: Conversation, Exile, and Nostalgia in Puritan New England" by Michael Kaufman profiles Hutchinson, Cotton, and Williams' Puritan ideologies.
"The Loyal and the Disloyal: Social Boundaries of Patriotism and Treason" is a 1966 classic by Morton Grodzins. Among other things, it argues that national loyalty is usually a passive byproduct of more local loyalties.
"The Myth of American Individualism" will change the way you look at early and modern American culture.
"Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800-1865" tells the heroic struggle of temperance, abolitionist and Protestant culturists.
"The Puritan Family " by Edmund Morgan tells provides great insight into our national character.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
I agree with much of what I read in "Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse" by Mary Ann Glendon.
Elie Kedourie's small, but excellent "Nationalism" is herein complimented with a lot of my own commentary in bold letters. This early romantic German model of community compares UNfavorably with the British rational model.
WORLD HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE (OFTEN HARD TO DISENTANGLE)
Though organized for teaching purposes, this is a good and thorough summary of a book that changed the way I and much of the world views global politics; Samuel Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order." This is essential culturist reading!
"The Lucifer Principle" describes how biology explains the existence, policy, and proliferation of societies and cultures. It is one of the most ingeneous books I have read.
"Beyond Culture" by Edward T. Hall is a great summary of the deep differences between cultures.
"Civilization" was an amazing BBC series on the history of art. Sir Kenneth Clarke's transcript is summarized herein.
"The Chalice and the Blade" is a feminist history of the world that does not help the estimation of Western Civ. in Universities.
The End of Human Rights – Critical legal thought at the turn of the Century By Costas Douzinas defends it's title very well. It seems that humans rights are not an eternal truth.
Man and Technics is Oswald Spengler's (of decline and fall fame) attempt to map the evolution of man's consciousness.
This is a summary of a summary which summarizes Derrida's take on Fukuyama's "End of History".
"The Myth of the Eternal Return", by Mircae Eliade, also tries to suss out the ontology of the primitive mind. It postulates that previously man repeated the past to escape history. It provides a grounding for the uniqueness of our culture in the philosophy of history.
NATURAL SCIENCE
"Not by Genes Alone" shows that culture was a driving force, on par with genes, in creating the human.
"The Cellular Basis of Behavior" is a college neuroscience reader from Yale.
I present the highlights of "The Evolution of Culture in Animals" to further stimulate your bio-mind!
Lakoff and Johnson's books finally explain the root of thought."Metaphors We Live By" is an enormously fabulous book.
PSYCHOLOGY
Judith Rich Harris' "The Nurture Assumption" presents a whole new way to look at cultural transmission and child psychology.
This 'point to point' highlight summary of Robert Putnam's amazing and important "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community" should inspire you to buy it!
"The Moral Animal" is reaaally good. It teaches evolutionary psychology via a biography of Darwin.
Twitchell's "Shame" decries the death of shame. It documents the importance of shame to culture and how we lost it.
"Social Mindscapes" is a corrective that every neuroscientist and neuroscience fan should be made to read. Eviatar Zerubavel's clever book reminds us of how much of our world view is in our world.
"Sociology and Scientism" is by Richard Bannister. It tells us how we have fetishized science and used it to pervert the way we do social sciences.
ANTHROPOLOGY
"War before Civilization" is by Lawrence Keely, a much needed rewrite to the myth of the peaceful savage, and essential culturist reading.
Mr. Robert Edgerton's "Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony" shows that early societies were not kind nor healthy. It is a stunning book.
"A Green History of the World" predates Jared Diamond in bring the impact of the environment in history to our attention. It appears in the anthropology section of culturism.
"Totemism" is a really important book because it starts structuralism. Structuralism sees all cultures as essentially the same.
"How Natives Think" lost an early academic battle to "Totemism." Its overshadowing has done as much as Mead's later acaemic victories did to spread the idea that all cultures are the same. It should have won; it should be recovered.
EDUCATION
"The Learning Gap" is chock full of insights from a comparison of Japan's education system and ours.
Ms. Fass' "Outside In: Minorities and the Transofmation of American Education" looks at the often neglected topic of women's education and the impact of Catholic schools on public education. It also has a great study of NY yearbooks circa 1900.
Professor Zimmerman's book, "Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools" breaks the culture wars down into its religious and historical components so we can better contemplate resolutions.
"The Armed Services and Adult Education" surveys the wide variety of adult education programs offered by the military during World War Two. It ends with 51 implications for civilian adult education.
"The Uneducated" is a 1950s classic. It is a focused analysis of the successes and national implications of the Army's World War Two literacy training program
The National Youth Administration by Palmer O. Johnson Staff Study number 13. Prepared for the Advisory Committee on Education to the President was written in 1938
This Report of the National Advisory Committee of the NYA to the President is fromCharles W. Taussig. It was delivered on March 19th 1942
"Education in the Forming of American Society" is a beautifully concise, insightful summary of what it's title promises to explain.
FUTURISM
David Shenk's book, "Data Smog" tells of the excess of available information screwing with our minds.
Its a post-modern ditty entitled "Life: The Movie, How Entertainment Conquered Reality." Neal Gabler is the author.
This summary is a combination of "Structuralism for Beginners", "Post-structuralism for Beginners" AND "Introducing Semiotics"
"Out of Control" is by the editor of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly. It shows how emerging technology will reshape our world.
The title of "When things start to think" explains it all. It is a fun book by Gershenfel Neil of MIT fame.
"The Origins of American Social Science" is a classic deep overview. Dorothy Ross is the author.
CLASSIC HISTORICAL CULTURISM
Frances Kellor is my newest culturist hero. She led the Americanization movement. Her harshest book, "Straight American" is summarized here.
Frances Kellor also wrote "The Federal Administration and the Alien: A supplement to Immigration and the Future."
"The Movement to Americanize the Immigrant" by Edward Hartmann is the only full length book on the Americanization Movement.
Lester Frank Ward is the American Aristotle and an important 19th century culturist. His 1893, "The Psychic Factors of Civilization" is scripture!! IF YOU WILL.
Lester Frank Ward's 1906 "Applied Sociology" shows that we haven't begun to tap the potential of mankind. We need to educate all! His analysis is again brilliant.
PHILOSOPHY
Plato's "LAWS" is foundational. It is the basis of all political imagination. It shows no matter what the genetic influence or mode of transmission mind is free to guide in myriads of ways.
"After Virtue" is an extremely important culturist book. It takes Aristotle's side against Kant's.
Copelston's "History of Philosophy" is a classic in the field of summaries. This summary of modern philsophies comes from the last volume of this Jesuit's survey. In it you can learn more about pragmatism, William James, and John Dewey.
The classic!!! "Varieties of Religious Experiences" by William James combines rational scientific pragmatism and heavy spirituality. It's a how to be spiritual book for athiests.
"A Critique of Pure Tolerance" has a punny title and three different authors who dislike absolute tolerance as a basis of values.
Kant's infamously hard to understand "Critique of Judgment".
Not to be out done, Kant also wrote the very turgent and important, "Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals".
But then we go back in time to that Kantrarian (ha ha), Aristotle. Aristotle found ethics to be in works. This work is called the "Nicomachean ethics".
"Ideas Have Consequences" by Richard Weaver is a cornerstone manifesto. From a culturist perspective it only fails in making property rights metaphysically based.
"In Defense of Elitism" by William A. Henry III is another conservative cornerstone.
Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil" is a morally ambiguous philosophy classic which shows that morals are not eternal.
"The Foucault Reader" is a collection of essays by the popular archeologist of mental states. His work also shows that mental states are or political concepts are not eternal vertitudes. Ironically cited by moral absolutists, he takes on Kant and the Enlightenment.
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