I'll be teaching a class at the Freie Universität this summer on this topic, in the North American Studies department. I am wondering what I should have them read. So far I am considering:
1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.
2. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, by Paul Fussell.
3. The American Religion, by Harold Bloom.
4. John Gunther, Inside U.S.A.; a longstanding favorite of mine.
5. State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey.
6. American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, by Seymour Martin Lipset.
7. Peter Baldwin, The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How American and Europe are Alike. I disagree with the premise of this book but nonetheless it may shake them out of their dogmatic slumbers.
8. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America.
Albion's Seed is an excellent book but it is too long. What have I forgotten? Should I have more on Mormons?
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If it were my view of America….
I. What we were
a) Constitution
b) Declaration of Independence
c) Federalist Papers
II. Transformation
a) 1913 Constitutional Amendments (16 and 17)
b) FDR and Progressives
William Manchester’s Glory and the Dream
III Progressive Endgame
a) entitlements
b) demographic shifts
c) governmental corruption
Assigned reading – Parliament of Whores
Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography or the biography of Franklin by Walter Isaacson
“The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business” by Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
On the subject of race, I would recommend Why Race Matters by Michael Levin, and Race, Evolution, and Behavior by
J. Phillipe Rushton.
Fred Reed: The Great Possum-Squashing Beer Storm of 1962
I would recommend Thomas Sowell’s Ethnic America which I was referred to me by Bryan Caplan.
Lies My Teacher Told Me by Loewen
and
People’s History of the United States by Zinn
Since it’s a summer course…
“America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction” by John Stewart
America the Unusual
Neither Jesus Nor Marx. The Antiamerican obsession . Revel
On Paradise and Power. Kagan
I’m suprised no one has mentioned “A People’s History of the United States” by Zinn yet
Congress: the Electoral Connection by David R. Mayhew. (Yale, 1974)
Very readable, short, a classic on congressional motivation. There is also a second edition (Yale, 2004) with a forward by R. Douglas Arnold and new preface by Mayhew.
The New Americans by Michael Barone makes some broad and pithy comparisons, but is pretty good on how we assimilate immigrants and how our views on race has changed.
Don’t give them any books to read. Simply tell them that any decent American would be horrified that Germany jails people
for Holocaust denial, then wait to see the reactions on their faces. Any (if any) who are not shocked, you can then suggest
whatever you want, these will clearly have a ray of hope in them.
Oakley Sunglasses catch people’s eyes.people expect to see new items of Oakley Enduring, while the classic items are still hot, like Ray Ban Sunglasses.
Dianetics.
“Special Providence” by Walter Russell Mead
“The Irony of American History” by Reinhold Niebuhr
and “The American Scholar” by Emerson
You should include that Alesina et al paper on Why the US doesn’t have a European-style welfare state.
Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Added bonus of it being available in German and English.
a couple of years ago, my American son-in-law recommended Don’t Know Much About History – Everything You Need to Know About American History But Never Learned before my wife and i embarked on a drive across the States; it was excellent for filling in the gaps of one’s take on American history
I am absolutely SHOCKED that no books highlighting the gay, lesbian, and bisexual experience in American have been suggested.
Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (almost a quarter-century old now, but still pretty darn current)
This poem by Tony Hoagland:
America
by Tony Hoagland
Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison
Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,
And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu
Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels
Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
Of the thick satin quilt of America
And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,
And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night, It was not blood but money
That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part—,
He gasped “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were
Clogging up my heart—
And so I perish happily,
Freed from that which kept me from my liberty†—
Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
Would never speak in rhymed couplets,
And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone
and phony ghetto clothes
And I think, “I am asleep in America too,
And I don’t know how to wake myself either,†
And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life: “I was listening to the cries of the past,
When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.†
But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
Or what kind of nightmare it might be
When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river
Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters
And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher?
Come on Tyler, when I posted “Dianetics” it was a joke!
Tocqueville for sure.
The one concept most non-Americans can’t fathom is the nature of our federal republic. Deswegen, I also agree with a complete discussion of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – correct and original history, not the Howard Zinn version.
It depends a lot on the area you are teaching in, and what kind of students they are. I taught classes like this at another German university, and found that the students didn’t know much at all. Try to keep their interest without overcomplicating it. Also keep in mind that they may read 5% of what is on the reading list. Try one of Oscar Handlin’s history of America or of immigration to America.
As a German who studies a year in the US, I agree with Ben Nelsons list:
I. What we were
a) Constitution
b) Declaration of Independence
c) Federalist Papers
II. Transformation
a) 1913 Constitutional Amendments (16 and 17)
b) FDR and Progressives
William Manchester’s Glory and the Dream
III Progressive Endgame
a) entitlements
b) demographic shifts
c) governmental corruption
Assigned reading – Parliament of Whores
A sense of history and evolution is necessary. I agree on the need to include the continuing impact of slavery, the civil War and Reconstruction, especially in the American South.
Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man
Looking forward to your Berlin and the other German cities review!
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