Americana Extra

A look at a cultural historian's cultural historian

For any of you who may be interested, I have a piece out today in Current assessing the career of Jackson Lears. Lears is a cultural historian’s cultural historian—not particularly well known outside the academy but admired (if not exactly beloved) inside it, and somebody who’s had a paradigmatic scholarly career as a quintessential product of the academic meritocracy. I’ve read most of Lears’s work, including what I think of as his best book, Fables of Abundance, a history of advertising. He’s also done a fine book about the role of luck in American life, Something for Nothing.

Tomorrow I continue my Sestercentennial Moments series with a piece on the entrance of Thomas Jefferson onto the historical stage. I hope you like these little essays. Please spread the word! —Jim