Saladin Ambar, "Reconsidering American Political Thought: A New Identity" (Routledge, 2019)

Saladin Ambar has written a masterful examination and analysis of American political thought in this new book which does, in fact, reconsider our thinking about this particular branch of political theory. Ambar has integrated into Reconsidering American Political Thought: A New Identity (Routledge, 2019) the variegated threads of many of the traditional texts within the American political thought canon while also weaving in texts, authors, and ideas that have usually been relegated to secondary considerations. Mapping on to American political development over the course of four hundred years, Ambar has written essentially a companion reader to be used as both a primary document and as a supplementary source for students and scholars of American thought. This is an insightful exploration of the American mind, in its many facets, bringing together not only thinkers and theorists, but writers, artists, poets, and musicians, as well as the political history of the continent, all in dialogue with each other as they individually, and through encounter, contribute to and tease at the idea of American identity and American political thought. Foregrounding voices and considerations of race and gender, Ambar takes the reader through a host of political eras, beginning in 1619 and concluding today, weaving together traditional analyses with a diversity of perspectives and contributors. This is an important and accessible book, urging the reader to dig into primary source documents, novels, short stories, lyrics, religion, and various kinds of images, all pulled together in an effort to understand American thinking, the American mind, and the tensions inherent in American national identity.

Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

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