Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T16:37:30.865Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Dreams of a More Perfect Union By Rogan Kersh. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. 358p. $39.95.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2002

Robert W. T. Martin
Affiliation:
Hamilton College

Extract

Rogan Kersh's ambitious and well-researched book traces the history of the concept of American national “union” from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, when the concept lost the peculiar force it had had and fell out of use (more or less replaced by such concepts as “nation,” “country,” and, especially, “America”). The analysis demonstrates how the concept of national union has been used in exclusive as well as inclusive ways. The subject is an important one, especially to an America united by terrorist threats. And it is a topic made more conspicuous in the last decade by our ongoing discourse over multiculturalism. So the concept of national union is perhaps less obscure and more relevant than Kersh suggests (p. 3). Connections to the recent work of Rogers Smith (Civic Ideals, 1997) are also apparent. Still, the term itself has been out of favor for about a century now, so Kersh's study is a welcome effort to get us thinking about a relatively novel topic.

Type
Book Review
Copyright
© 2002 by the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.