Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story

Description

We have a glut of text and trade books on American history. But what we don’t
have is a compact, inexpensive, authoritative, and compulsively readable book
that will offer to American readers a clear, informative, and inspiring
narrative account of their own country. Such an account can shape and deepen
their sense of the land they inhabit and, by making them understand that
land’s roots, and share in its memories, will equip them for the privileges
and responsibilities of citizenship in American society. It will provide them
with an enduring sense of membership in one of the greatest enterprises in
human history: the exciting, perilous, and consequential story of their own
country. The existing texts simply fail to tell that story with energy and
conviction. They are more likely to reflect the skeptical or partial outlook
of specialized professional academic historians, an outlook that leads to a
fragmented and fractured view of modern American society and fails to convey
to American readers the greater arc of their own history. Or they
disproportionately reflect the outlook of radical critics of American society,
whose one-sided accounts lack the balance of a larger perspective and have had
an enormous, and largely negative, effect upon the teaching of American
history in American high schools and colleges. This state of affairs cannot
continue for long without producing serious consequences. A great nation needs
and deserves a great and coherent narrative, as an expression of its own self-
understanding; and it needs to be able to convey that narrative to its young
effectively. It perhaps goes without saying that such a narrative cannot be a
fairy tale or a whitewash of the past; it will not be convincing if it is not
truthful. But there is no necessary contradiction between an honest account of
the American past and an inspiring one. This account seeks to provide both.
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Features:

Product Details:

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Encounter Books (May 21, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 504 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594039372
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 79
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 – 17 years
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ 9 and up
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.52 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 1.25 x 10.5 inches
• Best Sellers Rank: #61,308 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #17 in Historical Study & Teaching #37 in Historical Study Reference (Books) #42 in History Encyclopedias