Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

"American Intellectual History: A Very Short Introduction provides an introduction to American thought. It considers how notions about freedom and belonging, the market and morality have commanded generations of Americans and been the cause of fierce debate. Before the United States was a nation, it was a set of ideas, projected onto the New World by European explorers with centuries of belief and thought in tow. America and American thought grew...

If you were looking for a philosopher likely to appeal to Americans, Friedrich Nietzsche would be far from your first choice. After all, in his blazing career, Nietzsche took aim at nearly all the foundations of modern American life: Christian morality, the Enlightenment faith in reason, and the idea of human equality. Despite that, for more than a century Nietzsche has been a hugely popular-and surprisingly influential-figure in American thought...