Interior States

"This book combines scope and depth in a way that will remind readers of some of the classics--F. O. Matthiessen, Leo Marx, Ann Douglas, Jane Tompkins. In a book propelled by wonderful writing, Christopher Castiglia illuminates the extent to which the self-declared greatest democracy of world history has struggled to be democratic institutionally. His call for a 'post-interior humanism' gains real urgency from an account of a centuries-old impasse in American life that readers will remember long after they have finished the book."--Christopher Newfield, author of "The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America"

Christopher Castiglia is professor of American Literature and senior scholar at the Center for American Literary Study at the Pennsylvania State University.