American Labyrinth contains a stimulating and useful collection of essays by historians reflecting on American intellectual history.... As a whole, the book convinces the reader that the field of intellectual history is enjoying a renaissance. The book will be especially prized by intellectual historians, but historians of many different persuasions will find these essays rewarding too.―Choice

Intellectual history has never been more relevant and more important to public life in the United States. In complicated and confounding times, people look for the principles that drive action and the foundations that support national ideals. American Labyrinth demonstrates the power of intellectual history to illuminate our public life and examine our ideological assumptions.

This volume of essays brings together 19 influential intellectual historians to contribute original thoughts on topics of widespread interest. Raymond Haberski Jr. and Andrew Hartman asked a group of nimble, sharp scholars to respond to a simple question: How might the resources of intellectual history help shed light on contemporary issues with historical resonance? The answers—all rigorous, original, and challenging—are as eclectic in approach and temperament as the authors are different in their interests and methods. Taken together, the essays of American Labyrinth illustrate how intellectual historians, operating in many different registers at once and ranging from the theoretical to the political, can provide telling insights for understanding a public sphere fraught with conflict.

In order to understand why people are ready to fight over cultural symbols and political positions we must have insight into how ideas organize, enliven, and define our lives. Ultimately, as Haberski and Hartman show in this volume, the best route through our contemporary American labyrinth is the path that traces our practical and lived ideas.

Introduction: Intellectual History for Complicated Times
Section I MAPPING AMERICAN IDEAS
1. Wingspread: So What? James Livingston
2. On Legal Fundamentalism: David Sehat
3. Freedom's Just Another Word? The Intellectual Trajectories of the 1960s: Kevin M. Schultz
Section II IDEAS AND AMERICAN IDENTITIES
4. Philosophy vs. Philosophers: A Problem in American Intellectual History: Amy Kittelstrom
5. The Price of Recognition: Race and the Making of the Modern University: Jonathan Holloway
6. Thanks, Gender! An Intellectual History of the Gym: Natalia Mehlman Petrzela
7. Parallel Empires: Transnationalism and Intellectual History in the Western Hemisphere: Ruben Flores
Section III DANGEROUS IDEAS
8. Toward a New, Old Liberal Imagination: From Obama to Niebuhr and Back Again: Kevin Mattson
9. Against the Liberal Tradition: An Intellectual History of the American Left: Andrew Hartman
10. From "Tall Ideas Dancing" to Trump's Twitter Ranting: Reckoning the Intellectual History of Conservatism: Lisa Szefel
11. The Reinvention of Entrepreneurship: Angus Burgin
Section IV CONTESTED IDEAS
12. War and American Thought: Finding a Nation through Killing and Dying: Raymond Haberski Jr.
13. United States in the World: The Significance of an Isolationist Tradition: Christopher McKnight Nichols
14. Reinscribing Religious Authenticity: Religion, Secularism, and the Perspectival Character of Intellectual History: K. Healan Gaston
15. "The Entire Thing Was a Fraud": Christianity, Free thought, and African American Culture: Christopher Cameron
Section V IDEAS AND CONSEQUENCES
16. Against and beyond Hofstadter: Revising the Study of Anti-intellectualism: Tim Lacy
17. Culture as Intellectual History: Broadening a Field of Study in the Wake of the Cultural Turn: Benjamin L. Alpers
18. On the Politics of Knowledge: Science, Conflict, Power: Andrew Jewett
Conclusion: The Idea of Historical Context and the Intellectual Historian: Andrew Jewett
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Index