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Article: H.W. Brands, The Strange Death of American Liberalism.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- American Studies International
- Article date:
- February 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 George Washington University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), xiii + 192 pp., $22.50 (cloth).
If American liberalism is dead, what killed it? The question, to be sure, lies at or near the crux of current political debate, particularly in the wake of this year's remarkable midterm election cycle and the identity crisis facing beleaguered Democrats. However, partisan politics may explain only a small part of the story. For H.W. Brands, liberalism's much-ballyhooed demise resulted not from a precise ideological shift among Americans, but from their historical adherence to that "-ism" nearest the heart of our national maturation--pragmatism. In the Brands model great men such as ...