American individualism: It is the reason for American success, but it also tears the nation apart. Why do Americans have so much trouble seeing eye to eye today? Is this new? Was there ever an American consensus? The Cult of Individualism: A History of an Enduring American Myth explores the rarely discussed cultural differences leading to today's seemingly intractable political divides. After an examination of the various meanings of individualism in America, author Aaron Barlow describes the progression and evolution of the concept from the 18th century on, illuminating the wide division in Caucasian American culture that developed between the culture based on the ideals of the English Enlightenment and that of the Scots-Irish "Borderers." The "Borderer" legacy, generally explored only by students of Appalachian culture, remains as pervasive and significant in contemporary American culture and politics as it is, unfortunately, overlooked. It is from the "Borderers" that the Tea Party sprang, along with many of the attitudes of the contemporary American right, making it imperative that this culture be thoroughly explored.

Common Ground explores the philosophical relationship between collectivity, individuality, affect and agency in the neoliberal era. Jeremy Gilbert argues that individualism is forced upon us by neoliberal culture, fatally limiting our capacity to escape the current crisis of democratic politics. The book asks how forces and ideas opposed to neoliberal hegemony, and to the individualist tradition in Western thought, might serve to protect some form of communality, and how far we must accept assumptions about the nature of individuality and collectivity which are the legacy of an elitist tradition. Along the way it examines different ideas and practices of collectivity, from conservative notions of hierarchical and patriarchal communities to the politics of 'horizontality' and 'the commons' which are at the heart of radical movements today. Exploring this fundamental faultline in contemporary political struggle, Common Ground proposes a radically non-individualist mode of imagining social life, collective creativity and democratic possibility.

Accessible and sharply focused, The Myth of Individualism is the perfect introduction to understanding the ways social forces influence, shape, and control our lives

Sentimentalism, Ethics and the Culture of Feeling defends feeling against customary distrust or condescension by showing that the affective turn of the eighteenth-century cult of sentiment, despite its sometimes surreal manifestations, has led to a positive culture of feeling. The very reaction against sentimentalism has taught us to identity sentimentality. Fiction, moreover, remains a principal means not just of discriminating quality of feeling but of appreciating its essentially imaginative nature.

Reconciles seemingly conflicting views of Asian transcendence and American freedom to argue that post-WWII American writers envision a more enlightened individualism.

The Bible was written within collectivist cultures, and it's easy for Westerners to misinterpret—or miss—important elements. Combining the expertise of a biblical scholar and a missionary practitioner, this essential guidebook explores the deep social structures of the ancient Mediterranean, stripping away individualist assumptions and helping us read the Bible better.

In this volume, Ian Watt examines the myths of Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan and Robinson Crusoe, as the distinctive products of modern society. He traces the way the original versions of Faust, Don Quixote and Don Juan - all written within a forty-year period during the Counter Reformation - presented unflattering portrayals of the three figures, while the Romantic period two centuries later recreated them as admirable and even heroic. The twentieth century retained their prestige as mythical figures, but with a new note of criticism. Robinson Crusoe came much later than the other three, but his fate can be seen as representative of the new religious, economic and social attitudes which succeeded the Counter-Reformation. The four figures help to reveal problems of individualism in the modern period: solitude, narcissism, and the claims of the self versus the claims of society. They all pursue their own view of what they should be, raising strong questions about their heroes' character and the societies whose ideals they reflect.