{"product_id":"9780807860427","title":"Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford","description":"The \"Young American\" critics -- Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford -- are well known as central figures in the Greenwich Village \"Little Renaissance\" of the 1910s and in the postwar debates about American culture and politics.  In \u003ci\u003eBeloved Community\u003c\/i\u003e, Casey Blake considers these intellectuals as a coherant group and assesses the connection between thier cultural criticisms and their attempts to forge a communitarian alternative to liberal and socialist poitics. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBlake draws on biography to emphasize the intersection of questions of self, culture, and society in their calls for a culture of \"personality\" and \"self-fulfillment.\"  In contrast to the tendency of previous analyses to separate these critics' cultural and autobiographical writings from their politics, Blake argues that their cultural criticism grew out of a radical vision of self-realization through participation in a democratic culture and polity.  He also examines the Young American writers' interpretations of such turn-of-the-century radicals as William Morris, Henry George, John Dewey, and Patrick Geddes and shows that this adversary tradition still offers important insights into contemporary issues in American politics and culture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeloved Community\u003c\/i\u003e reestablishes the democratic content of the Young Americans' ideal of \"personality\" and argues against viewing a monolithic therapeutic culture as the sole successor to a Victorian \"culture of character.\" The politics of selfhood that was so critical to the Young Americans' project has remained a contested terrain throughout the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"The University of North Carolina Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47068120416496,"sku":"9780807860427","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780807860427_p0.jpg?v=1763740617","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780807860427","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}