Alexis de Tocqueville asserted that America had no truly great literature, and that American writers merely mimicked the British and European traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This new edited collection masterfully refutes Tocqueville's monocultural myopia and reveals the distinctive role American poetry and prose have played in reflecting and passing judgment upon the core values of American democracy. The essays, profiling the work of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Updike, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Willa Cather, (...) Walker Percy, and Tom Wolfe, reveal how America's greatest writers have acted as society's most ardent cheerleaders and its most penetrating critics. Christine Dunn Henderson's exciting new work offers literature as a portal through which to view the philosophical principles that animate America's political order and the mores which either reinforce or undermine them. (shrink)

Xenophon’s intention in writing the Memorabilia was to show that Socrates was neither naïve nor aloof with regard to the political fate of Athens. In a section on ‘Socratic Politics’, Xenophon shows us that Socrates was a teacher of practical politics by recounting, in the first part of that section, Socrates’ conversations with aspiring and practising, but mostly anonymous, Athenian politicians about the limitations and practical requirements of military and political leadership; and, in the second part, applying those lessons to (...) well-known Athenians. This article argues that, according to Xenophon, Socrates’ objectives in teaching politics were three-fold: first, he aimed to moderate the ambitions of his companions by instructing them about the proper ends and practice of a decent politics; second, he provided advice to these politicians that pointed Athens towards a non-imperial and hence more moderate political life; and finally, he sought to carve out within the city a private sphere reserved for friendship and philosophy. (shrink)