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Author King, Casey (William Casey), author.

Title Ambition, a history : from vice to virtue / William Casey King
Published New Haven : Yale University Press, [2013]

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Description 1 online resource (vii, 248 pages) : illustrations
Contents From vice to Christian sin -- Ambition as sin in early modern English culture : Perilous acts of self-elevation, Subversive acts of self-negation -- The plague and countervailing passions -- Harnessing ambition in the age of exploration -- Epilogue
Summary Is "ambitious" a compliment' It depends: "[A] masterpiece of intellectual and cultural history."'David Brion Davis, author of Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World From rags to riches, log house to White House, enslaved to liberator, ghetto to CEO, ambition fuels the American Dream. Yet at the time of the nation's founding, ambition was viewed as a dangerous vice, everything from "a canker on the soul" to the impetus for original sin. This engaging book explores ambition's surprising transformation, tracing attitudes from classical antiquity to early modern Europe to the New World and America's founding. From this broad historical perspective, William Casey King deepens our understanding of the American mythos and offers a striking reinterpretation of the introduction to the Declaration of Independence. Through an innovative array of sources and authors'Aquinas, Dante, Machiavelli, the Geneva Bible, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, and many others'King demonstrates that a transformed view of ambition became possible the moment Europe realized that Columbus had discovered not a new route but a new world. In addition the author argues that reconstituting ambition as a virtue was a necessary precondition of the American republic. The book suggests that even in the twenty-first century, ambition has never fully lost its ties to vice and continues to exhibit a dual nature'positive or negative depending upon the ends, the means, and the individual involved
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-232) and index
Notes English
Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on February 06, 2023)
Subject Ambition -- Political aspects -- United States -- History
Ambition -- Social aspects -- United States -- History
National characteristics, American -- History
Christianity and culture -- United States -- History
Social values -- United States -- History
Social change -- United States -- History
Ambition -- Social aspects -- England -- History
Christianity and culture -- England -- History
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- General.
HISTORY -- Social History.
Christianity and culture
Civilization
National characteristics, American
Social change
Social values
SUBJECT United States -- Civilization -- To 1783. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85139935
England -- Civilization. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85043272
Subject England
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2012034912
ISBN 9780300189841
0300189842