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Bookends: Seven Stories Excised from the Lost Promise of Progressivism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
Extract
[Author's note: Excising large chunks from book manuscripts is a common practice and rarely a loss to scholarly literature. Originally appended to various parts of my book manuscript on the intellectual origins of American Progressivism were seven stories to which I had become quite attached. I was surprised, therefore, when early readers suggested that I drop them because they interrupted the narrative flow of the text. I resisted this advice until their judgment was seconded by later readers and editors. Cut them I did. But to cut is not necessarily to run. They are offered separately here because they capture some of the main themes of The Lost Promise of Progressivism and indirectly call into question some major interpretive frameworks of American Progressivism, both as a system of ideas and as a defining moment in American political culture. They were to me something like minor Epiphanies, suddenly shifting my gaze and clarifying my views.]
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References
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34. Ibid., 110.
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