Introduction; I: THE PERSONAL AND THE PROFESSIONAL; 1. Personal Identity and the Historian's Vocation; II: PERCEPTIONS OF CULTURE AND PUBLIC LIFE; 2. Culture and the State in America; 3. Temples of Justice: The Iconography of Judgment and American Culture; 4. "Our Idealism Is Practical": Emerging Uses of Tradition in American Commercial Culture, 1889-1936; 5. The Enduring Challenges and Changing Role of Cultural Institutions; III: CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF THE PAST; 6. Myth, Memory, and Amnesia in American Historical Art; 7. The Problem of American Exceptionalism: A Reconsideration
Summary
Michael Kammen is a major American historian, whose books have received the Bancroft and Parkman prizes. This book collects his essays on American culture, of which he is one of the major historians
