If America has a claim to exceptionalism, American Credo locates it in a little understood ability to engage in deep conflicts over political ideas, while at the same time reducing adversarial positions to legitimate derivatives of American history and development.

American society may be hostile to the thought of ideologies, but it possesses a sophisticated but little understood ability to engage in deep conflicts over political ideas, while at the same time reducing adversarial positions to legitimate derivatives of American history and development. The study asks how this occurs; how the sources, traditions and usages of core ideas and their derivative compounds animate political discourse and structure the basis of political conflict; and how it is possible to sustain a high incidence of competitive value-laden argument and principled political conflict within a stable political order. The fundamental aim of this study is to examine the traditions and usages of American political ideas within the arena of practical politics. By locating them in their respective contexts, it will be possible to assess both their changing meanings and their shifting relationships to one another. In surveying America's core ideas both in isolation and in combination, the book facilitates an informed awareness of their political and cultural leverage as forms of persuasion and sources of legitimacy. American Credo roots the examination of American political ideas firmly in the milieu of social drives, political movements and contemporary issues within which the ideas themselves are embedded. This not only allows the study to investigate the interior properties and traditional priorities of America's key values but permits the theoretical implications and practical consequences of these ideas to be traced and evaluated. By marshalling a wide variety of evidence from different disciplines and perspectives, and by employing innovative principles of organisation, the study offers clarity and depth in support of an inventive explanatory scheme. It concludes with a review of the current and likely future challenges to the protocols and conventions surrounding the matrix of ideational coexistence.

Confessions of an American None: A Credo of Sorts is part memoir, part credo, and part romp in pop culture, spotlighting the largest, fastest-growing spiritual demographic in our country- the religiously unaffiliated, aka Nones.A swashbuckling narrative upends conventional thinking about God and religion. Some doctrinal alligators are wrestled into compliance. Some walk the plank. What is the fate of Original Sin, virgin births, and sexuality? It's probably not what you expect.Rachel Roberts shares personal tales of growing up in a cult (Praise Jesus and pass the snakes!), battling an adult relationship with Christianity (Jesus would get drunk with her over this one), and finding relief in becoming a None (phew). She unearths a spirituality that balances the affirmation of reason and science with compassion and inclusivity while abandoning antiquated notions of superstition and tribalism.Seemingly quirky or random cultural references punctuate profundity with levity and reprieve. Think Spock meets the Dali Lama meets Bart Simpson. Each chapter contains a recipe and a well-known song that culminates in a meal and an accompanying playlist. This unique feature inspires the reader to experience everyday spirituality the way many Nones do, by meaningfully connecting with others.Amidst the fun, Confessions aims to instigate a voice for Nones, revolutionize spirituality based on 21st-century values, and reorient our collective consciousness toward that which unifies all people: Love.

Includes section "Book reviews".

The Faith and Fire Within Us was first published in 1944."All in all, the more I study the democratic tradition, the greater cause I see for faith and hope."However American are the faith and fire within us, however vital to America in time of war, they are also a part of the great tradition of the past, of all English-speaking nations. It is the importance of this continuity from age to age that gives strength to Elizabeth Jackson's treatment of American ideas. That Raymond Clapper is a direct descendant of Sir Francis Bacon, Leslie Howard of Sir Philip Sidney, Henry Wallace of Milton and Cromwell is soon apparent.The book speaks for today as well as for yesterday. Its ideas are the ideas of America at any time, now given new impetus by the war. Miss Jackson's is a very personal credo, but it is unmistakably American.Elizabeth Jackson thoroughly enjoyed her teaching at the University of Minnesota, and from her background in English and American literature she drew the many quotations of her book. Ranging in time from the Bible to Benet; prose, poetry, epic, radio talk, all contribute to the interpretation of modern America. While Miss Jackson's own experiences with people and places provide the personal anecdotes, it is her intense feeling about American ideas and ideals that strengthen The Faith and Fire Within Us.

"A beautiful, absorbing, tragic book."—Larry McMurtry In 1851, a war began in what would become Yosemite National Park, a war against the indigenous inhabitants. A century later–in 1951–and a hundred and fifty miles away, another war began when the U.S. government started setting off nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site. It was called a nuclear testing program, but functioned as a war against the land and people of the Great Basin. In this foundational book of landscape theory and environmental thinking, Rebecca Solnit explores our national Eden and Armageddon and offers a pathbreaking history of the west, focusing on the relationship between culture and its implementation as politics. In a new preface, she considers the continuities and changes of these invisible wars in the context of our current climate change crisis, and reveals how the long arm of these histories continue to inspire her writing and hope.

The selection in this one-volume anthology are representative of Nathan's entire oeuvre and include informal essays; criticism of famous plays of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; discussions of dramaturgy and aesthetics; profiles of noted producers, players, playwrights, and other writers; and letters that illuminate his writings.