Kloppenberg, James T. - Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition

January 01, 2010

James T. Kloppenberg. Princeton University Press. January 1, 2010
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Derided by the Right as dangerous and by the Left as spineless, Barack Obama puzzles observers. In Reading Obama, James T. Kloppenberg reveals the sources of Obama's ideas and explains why his principled aversion to absolutes does not fit contemporary partisan categories. Obama's commitments to deliberation and experimentation derive from sustained engagement with American democratic thought. Reading Obama traces the origins of his ideas and establishes him as the most penetrating political thinker elected to the presidency in the past century. Read More...

	James T. Kloppenberg Charles Warren Professor of American History he has been named a Harvard College Professor and awarded the Levinson Memorial Teaching Prize by the Harvard Undergraduate Council. He teaches courses on European and American thought, culture, and politics from the ancient world to the present. He serves on the faculty of the graduate program in the History of American Civilization and the undergraduate concentrations in History and Literature and Social Studies. His most recent book is Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), which explains the reasons for Obama’s commitments to democratic deliberation and conciliation by examining his intellectual formation and his understanding of American history. Current research projects include “Tragic Irony: The Rise of Democracy in European and American Thought” (forthcoming from Oxford University Press); “The American Democratic Tradition: Roger Williams to Barack Obama” (to be published by Princeton University Press); varieties of philosophical pragmatism in American culture from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century; and an essay collection on the practice of pragmatic hermeneutics in historical writing. He will next be on sabbatical leave in 2016-17. Read more...

James T. Kloppenberg Charles Warren Professor of American History he has been named a Harvard College Professor and awarded the Levinson Memorial Teaching Prize by the Harvard Undergraduate Council. He teaches courses on European and American thought, culture, and politics from the ancient world to the present. He serves on the faculty of the graduate program in the History of American Civilization and the undergraduate concentrations in History and Literature and Social Studies.

His most recent book is Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), which explains the reasons for Obama’s commitments to democratic deliberation and conciliation by examining his intellectual formation and his understanding of American history.

Current research projects include “Tragic Irony: The Rise of Democracy in European and American Thought” (forthcoming from Oxford University Press); “The American Democratic Tradition: Roger Williams to Barack Obama” (to be published by Princeton University Press); varieties of philosophical pragmatism in American culture from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century; and an essay collection on the practice of pragmatic hermeneutics in historical writing. He will next be on sabbatical leave in 2016-17. Read more...