The American Intellectual Tradition-Volume II: 1865 to the Present

As indicated in this work, The American Intellectual Tradition is primarily intellectual in orientation. Most of the documents it contains are the result of someone's effort to make an analysis and to persuade others of the correctness of that analysis. Although these documents express "attitudes" and embody "ideas," this work is sensitive to their status as arguments. Most of the selections are of the genres classically associated with purposive discourse: sermon, address, letter, treatise, and essay. The authors tried to identify pieces of argumentation that became prominent points of reference for contemporaries or for Americans of later generations. In so doing, they have necessarily been drawn again and again to the work of men and women normally regarded as intellectual leaders: people who were relatively effective at making arguments.