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The market revolution in America : liberty, ambition, and the eclipse of the common good
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ISBN: 9780511651960 0511651961 9780511818486 0511818483 9780511632877 0511632878 9780521883658 0521883652 9780521709897 052170989X 0511699689 9780511699689 1107211298 9781107211292 0511631669 9780511631665 0511634072 9780511634079 Year: 2010 Publisher: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press,

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The mass industrial democracy that is the modern United States bears little resemblance to the simple agrarian republic that gave it birth. The market revolution is the reason for this dramatic - and ironic - metamorphosis. The resulting tangled frameworks of democracy and capitalism still dominate the world as it responds to the panic of 2008. Early Americans experienced what we now call 'modernization'. The exhilaration - and pain - they endured have been repeated in nearly every part of the globe. Born of freedom and ambition, the market revolution in America fed on democracy and individualism even while it generated inequality, dependency, and unimagined wealth and power. In this book, John Lauritz Larson explores the lure of market capitalism and the beginnings of industrialization in the United States. His research combines an appreciation for enterprise and innovation with recognition of negative and unanticipated consequences of the transition to capitalism and relates economic change directly to American freedom and self-determination, links that remain entirely relevant today.


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Internal improvement : national public works and the promise of popular government in the early United States
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ISBN: 9798890870988 0807875643 Year: 2001 Publisher: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press,

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When the people of British North America threw off their colonial bonds, they sought more than freedom from bad government: most of the founding generation also desired the freedom to create and enjoy good, popular, responsive government. This book traces the central issue on which early Americans pinned their hopes for positive government action--internal improvement. The nation's early republican governments undertook a wide range of internal improvement projects meant to assure Americans' security, prosperity, and enlightenment--from the building of roads, canals, and bridges to the


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Laid waste! : the culture of exploitation in early America
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ISBN: 0812296672 Year: 2020 Publisher: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press,

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"This book is a historical synthesis of the culture of exploitation. It is also a lamentation of the qualities of America that led to current environmental crises. The author hopes to provoke and invite readers to engage in the difficult work of reimagining our modern world in more sustainable ways. Nature itself is resilient and the Earth will prevail, but we also would like to preserve the possibility of human life on this planet. This is a goal about which nature is utterly indifferent, but it was one of three in the hearts of the American founders. In Thomas Jefferson's hands the Lockean triad of "life, liberty, and property" was recast as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." That subtle difference implies so much more than mere survival or brutal domination; it suggests that wealth and power are not ends in themselves but means to something greater and deeply humane"-.


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