A perennial choice for courses on antebellum America, Jacksonian America continues to be a popular classroom text with scholars of the period, even among those who bridle at Pessen's iconoclastic views of Old Hickory and his "inegalitarian society."

Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics

History

Pessen, Edward

Americas

University of Illinois Press

The Log Cabin Myth: Social Backgrounds of the American Presidents

The log cabin myth: The social backgrounds of the presidents

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Yale University Press

Examines the backgrounds of each of our presidents, argues that their families were better off than the average American family, and discusses the whole presidential selection process

The Log Cabin Myth: The Social Backgrounds of the Presidents

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Yale Univ Pr

Riches, class, and power before the Civil War

Anthropology

D.C. Heath

Hardcover, no dust jacket. Boards are worn, rubbed and scuffed.

The Many-Faceted Jacksonian Era: New Interpretations (Contributions in American History)

Praeger

The age of Jackson saw the beginnings of America’s labor movement in the emergence both of trade unions and of the Working Men’s political parties. The leadership of this movement was one of its most outstanding and fascinating features. These radical leaders were “uncommon Jacksonians” in that they stood apart from both main currents of their day―the optimistic pursuit of material gain, and the moralistic criticism of that pursuit by traditionalists. They advocated a different, if minority, ideology, and it is this ideology that is Professor Pessen’s major concern in this book. The labor spokesmen were as diverse and complex as the movement they led. Some were employers rather than laborers and even the union leaders included men who had never actually soiled their hands in manual toil. In a sense these leaders were middle-class idealists interested in every variety of reform. They were drawn to labor largely because they believed it the most productive as well as the most victimized group in American society. For all their differences, however, the leaders’ social views were strikingly similar. They saw America as a class society dominated by the wealthy in general, capitalists in particular, with the control of government and the courts in the hands of the rich. Their picture of the contemporary social landscape was one marked by the poverty of the masses and vast disparities in wealth, power, and prestige. Greatly influenced by English radical thought, they rejected the Malthusian dictum that the poor were responsible for their own misery. They fixed the blame instead on a number of social institutions, the chief villain of which was private property. Without using the word “socialism,” the leaders’ vision of the good society was one in which no man profited from the labor of another, and the guiding principle was “to each according to his deeds.” Though a complex and often inconsistent phenomenon, the political movement represented by the early Working Men’s Parties was an authentic expression of labor’s views, Professor Pessen believes. This study challenges the legend that organized labor enthusiastically supported Jackson, and the longstanding myth that American labor movements have characteristically been conservative. Most Uncommon Jacksonians adds new perspectives to the history of American social thought.

Most Uncommon Jacksonians

Business & Money

Economics

State Univ of New York Pr

Most Uncommon Jacksonians: The Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Movement

Until publication of Riches, Classes, and Power, Alexis de Tocquerville's vision of the United States as a generally egalitarian nation predominated. While historians might quarrel about the social sources of egalitarianism, they did not dispute the soundness of the basic model; and Tocqueville's vision clearly dominated American's sense of itself as well. A self-acknowledged congenital skeptic, Pessen decided to find out whether the facts of American life sustained Tocqueville's conclusions. Riches, Class, and Power, represents more than five years' intensive research on the wealth, family backgrounds, careers, marriages, residential patterns, uses of leisure, life-styles, social standing, and influence and power of the wealthy in four of the five largest cities in the United States before the Civil War. Pessen examines New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and the then-separate city of Brooklyn in the 1820s and 1840s. His claim is that the massive evidence on urban life of the time sharply refutes Tocqueville's thesis. A National Book Award finalist for history, Riches, Class, and Power undoubtedly helped reshape America before the Civil War. In his reintroduction to this paperback edition, Pessen reviews the critical reaction, and reconsiders the extent to which its findings are applicable to the social structure of small or frontier towns of the period. He discusses whether unequal distribution of wealth in America results more from changes in historical circumstance or to shifts in demographic or age structure.

Riches, Class, and Power: United States Before the Civil War

Historical

Routledge

Losing Our Souls: The American Experience in the Cold War

The first book to sum up the consequences of the cold war for Americans. A searching account of the costs of the cold war Ovictory' that we are celebrating―not only the material price but the blight on our ideas, ideals, and institutions. ―James MacGregor Burns

Ivan R. Dee

The United States has won the cold war―but at what cost? While political observers ponder the collapse of Soviet communism, and historians continue to debate the origins of the cold war, scarcely anyone has considered the profound changes it wrought in American society. Edward Pessen's Losing Our Souls is the first book to sum up the consequences of the cold war for Americans―the shifting ideals of our approach to international affairs; the building of our nuclear arsenal; the tactics used to combat "communist subversion" throughout the world and within the United States; the transformation of the American economy in response to security demands. Carefully reviewing the evidence, Mr. Pessen charges that American cold war policy was disastrous for many of our cherished values and institutions. In a powerful indictment of American leadership, he accuses our cold war policymakers of deplorable activities and of misrepresenting them to the American people―all in the name of the cause of anticommunism. Losing Our Souls is an important book that challenges smug official appraisals of our cold war experience.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pessen, Edward. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pessen, Edward

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pessen, Edward. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics

The log cabin myth: The social backgrounds of the presidents

The Log Cabin Myth: The Social Backgrounds of the Presidents

Riches, class, and power before the Civil War

The Many-Faceted Jacksonian Era: New Interpretations (Contributions in American History)

Most Uncommon Jacksonians

Most Uncommon Jacksonians: The Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Movement

Riches, Class, and Power: United States Before the Civil War

Losing Our Souls: The American Experience in the Cold War

Losing Our Souls: The American Experience in the Cold War