One Man's America The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation
, by WILL, GEORGENote: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
- ISBN: 9780307454362 | 0307454363
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 11/17/2009
With Will's signature erudition and wry wit always on display, "One Man's America" chronicles a spectacular, eclectic procession of figures who have shaped the cultural landscape--from Hugh Hefner to William F. Buckley Jr.
GEORGE F. WILL writes a twice-weekly column that is syndicated in more than 450 newspapers, as well as a back-page column in Newsweek that runs biweekly. He also appears each Sunday on the ABC News program This Week. The author of twelve other books, Will is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary and the Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Hardcover edition.
Introduction | p. 1 |
People | |
The Fun of | p. 9 |
Buckley: A Life Athwart History | p. 11 |
Proud Anachronism | p. 13 |
"Cheerful Malcontent" | p. 15 |
Thoughts on Death | p. 23 |
The Tamarack Tree of American Politics | p. 25 |
What George McGovern Made | p. 28 |
The Senate's Sisyphus | p. 30 |
Galbraith's Liberalism as Condescension | p. 32 |
Ebullient Master of the Dismal Science | p. 35 |
High-Achieving Minimalist | p. 37 |
The Not-at-All Dull | p. 40 |
George Washington's Long Journey Home | p. 42 |
The Most Important American Never to Have Been President | p. 44 |
Well, Yes, of Course | p. 46 |
Longfellow: A Forgotten Founder | p. 49 |
The Steel Behind the Smile | p. 52 |
Reagan and the Vicissitudes of Historical Judgments | p. 54 |
"A Flame Rescued from Dry Wood" | p. 57 |
An Enlightenment Fundamentalist | p. 59 |
Tuning Fork of American Fantasies | p. 61 |
The Emeritus Beat as Tourist Attraction | p. 63 |
Buck Owens's Bakersfield Sound | p. 65 |
Seventy-nine-Pound Master of Tourette Syndrome | p. 68 |
Simeon Wright's Grace | p. 70 |
Paths To The Present | |
The Most Important American War You Know Next-to-Nothing About | p. 75 |
The Amazing Banality of Flight | p. 77 |
The Price of Misreading the Prairie Sky | p. 79 |
"A Range of Mountains on the Move" | p. 81 |
The Emblematic Novel of the 1930s (No, It Is Not About the Joads) | p. 84 |
All Quiet at the Overpass | p. 86 |
FDR's Transformation of Liberalism | p. 88 |
Retailers Give Thanks for Thanksgiving (and FDR) | p. 91 |
FDR's Christmas Guest from Hell | p. 93 |
"My Place Is with My Shipmates" | p. 95 |
An Anthem of American Optimism-in 1943 | p. 97 |
When War Was the Answer | p. 100 |
Catching Up to Captain Philip | p. 102 |
The Most Fateful Heart Attack in American History | p. 104 |
How Ike's Highways Helped Heal Civil War Wounds | p. 107 |
The Short, Unhappy Life of the Edsel | p. 109 |
The Fifties in Our Rearview Mirror | p. 111 |
2002: Superstitions Are Bad Luck | p. 114 |
2003: Lingerie and Duct Tape | p. 116 |
2004: The Passion of the Christ and The Passions of the Faculty Clubs | p. 118 |
2005: "In Lieu of Flowers, Please Send Acerbic Letters to Republicans" | p. 121 |
2006: "Go Ahead, We Will Get into One of the Other Boats" | p. 123 |
2007: Ready, Fire, Aim | p. 126 |
Governing | |
The Two Americas: Hard and Soft | p. 131 |
Angela Jobe's Resilience | p. 133 |
Conservatism's Infrastructure | p. 135 |
Against "National Greatness Conservatism" | p. 138 |
Summa Contra Reagan Nostalgia | p. 140 |
The Left's Plea for Materialistic Politics | p. 142 |
Constitutional Monomania | p. 145 |
Judicial Activism, Wise and Not | p. 147 |
The Hard Truth About "Soft Rights" | p. 149 |
Oologah's-and America's-Slide | p. 151 |
A Fraudulent "Fairness" | p. 154 |
Policing Speech in Oakland | p. 156 |
Liberalism's Itch in Minneapolis | p. 159 |
Chicago: From the White City to the Green City | p. 161 |
Our Moralizing Tax Code | p. 164 |
"Electronic Morphine" on the Ohio River | p. 166 |
Prohibition II: Interestingly Selective | p. 168 |
Being Green at Ben &c Jerry's | p. 171 |
The Tyranny of the Small Picture | p. 174 |
Draining the Reservoir of Reverence | p. 176 |
United 93: "We've Got to Do It Ourselves" | p. 178 |
Nothing Changes Everything | p. 181 |
Sensibilities And Sensitivities | |
Narcissism as News | p. 187 |
The Speciesism of Featherless Bipeds | p. 189 |
What We Owe to What We Eat | p. 191 |
The Holocaust: Handcrafted | p. 194 |
The "Daring" of the Avant-Garde Yet Again | p. 196 |
Anti-Semitism Across the Political Spectrum | p. 199 |
When Harry Remet Hanne | p. 201 |
Cars as Mobile Sculpture | p. 203 |
Hog Heaven: Happy One Hundredth, Harley | p. 206 |
Restoration at 346 Madison | p. 208 |
Starbucks, Nail Salons, and the Aesthetic Imperative | p. 210 |
Manners vs. Social Autism | p. 213 |
A Punctuation Vigilante | p. 215 |
America's Literature of Regret | p. 217 |
Chief Illiniwek and the Indignation Industry | p. 220 |
Christmas at Our Throats | p. 222 |
Learning | |
National Amnesia and Planting Cut Flowers | p. 227 |
A Sensory Blitzkrieg of Surfaces | p. 229 |
"Philosophy Teaching by Examples" | p. 231 |
Fascinating Contingencies | p. 233 |
Ed Schools vs. Education | p. 235 |
This Just In from the Professors: Conservatism Is a Mental Illness | p. 238 |
The Law of Group Polarization in Academia | p. 240 |
Antioch College's Epitaph | p. 243 |
A Scholar's Malfeasance Gunned Down | p. 245 |
Juggling Scarves in the Therapeutic Nation | p. 247 |
Nature, Nurture, and Larry Summers's Sin | p. 250 |
AP Harry Applies to College | p. 252 |
Teaching Minnows the Pleasure of Precision | p. 255 |
Games | |
Raising Michael Oher | p. 261 |
The Man from Moro Bottom | p. 266 |
"Rammer Jammer Yellowhammer!" | p. 268 |
Randy Shannon's Realism | p. 270 |
The NFL: An Intensification of Reality | p. 272 |
Speaking Sports Centerese | p. 275 |
The Movie, and the Truth, About Texas Western | p. 277 |
The Game | |
"Remember 1908!" | p. 283 |
The Possible and the Inevitable | p. 286 |
"I Can't Stand It, I'm So Good" | p. 288 |
"We Think He Can Hit" | p. 291 |
"Watch This-the First-Base Coach May Be Going to the Hospital" | p. 294 |
Take Me Out to the Metric | p. 296 |
Elias Knows Everything | p. 299 |
The Game's Gifted Eccentrics | p. 301 |
Don't Beat a Dead Horse in the Mouth | p. 305 |
The Golden Age | p. 307 |
Always Hustling | p. 310 |
The Precious, Precarious Equipoise | p. 312 |
Enhanced and Devalued | p. 314 |
The Methodical | p. 319 |
Realism Among the RiverDogs | p. 321 |
Striving for Motel Years | p. 323 |
Seeking Anonymous Perfection | p. 326 |
"Where Baseball?" | p. 328 |
Wondering | |
Incest at "a Genetically Discreet Remove" | p. 333 |
An Intellectual Hijacking | p. 335 |
From Dayton, Tennessee, to Rhode Island's Committee on Fish and Game | p. 339 |
Earth: Not Altogether Intelligently Designed | p. 341 |
Intelligent Design and Unintelligent Movies | p. 344 |
The Pope, the Neurosurgeon, and the Ghost in the Machine | p. 346 |
How Biology Buttresses Moratality, Which Conforms to...Biology | p. 348 |
The Space Program's Search for...Us | p. 351 |
Nuclear Waste: That's Us | p. 353 |
The Loudest Sound in Human Experience | p. 355 |
L = BB + pw + BC/BF | p. 358 |
Wonder What We Are For? Wondering | p. 360 |
Matters Of Life And Death | |
Golly, What Did Jon Do? | p. 365 |
The Long Dying of Louise Will | p. 367 |
Acknowledgments | p. 370 |
Permissions | p. 371 |
Index | p. 373 |
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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