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Loading... Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in Americaby David Hackett Fischer
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Fischer was my prof for two history classes in undergrad. This book shows how brilliant he is at understanding history. He presents the four British "folkways" that came to America and demonstrates how they influenced American culture in four specific regions. Admittedly, I have not quite finished this, and have only been able to read it in small bits interspersed with my other books - it's a lot of information. But it's fascinating! I've seen a lot of the differences between myself (from Virginia) and my local friends (NY) explained - slang expressions, favorite foods, manners. Not to mention learned a lot about regional differences in England that I wasn't really aware of. I also learned a lot more about early American immigrants than "they were persecuted for their religion". True in some cases, less so in others. And then some of them chose to persecute others for their religion once they got here, evidently. All in all, a very interesting account of early immigrants to the US. Excellent, excellent. Fischer makes a compelling case for why there are the regional differences found in America. Of course, I especially enjoyed reading about the influences Quakers had on American life. Fischer is very readable and makes history live. 0.037 seconds to build listing
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0195069056, Paperback)This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins.While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:57 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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On finishing it I couldn't look at the United States ( or Great Britain ) the same way again. (