A history of the major intellectual movement of 19th-century America, Mark Gura's AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISM provides an overview of its major ideas and personalities, while grounding it in a spirit of reform and progressivism. Gura identifies the seeds of this movement in Europe, and shows how (and why), on American soil, these philosophical, religious, and political views evolved.
Gura provides deep portraits of key thinkers--including Emerson and Thoreau, but also the lesser known Orestes Bronson and George Ripley--as well as the public that was attracted to its new ideas. He tells how, in the dispute over slavery, transcendentalism helped draw people to the abolitionist cause, and he explains how the movement, once concerned with making the world better, metamorphosized into the more mainstream American ideals of individuality and self-reliance. Nominated for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction.
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