"The stories that a country tells itself are just as critical to its functioning as its army, its laws, its borders, and its flag. Where did the country emerge from, and where might it be heading? Such questions of national mythology are especially fraught in the United States, still relatively young in the world, big, rich, powerful, multiethnic, and operating on a set of profoundly contradictory ideas. That it might be possible to make sense of American political division by naming those myths and interpreting the news of the day through their filter is the guiding ambition of Richard Slotkin’s exciting and detailed new decoder ring of a book, A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America. ..."
No comments:
Post a Comment