Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln

Making the American Self examines the development of self-cultivation and moral philosophy in American intellectual history from the colonial period through the Civil War. The book focuses on key thinkers including Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln to trace how ideas about individual character formation evolved. Through chapters organized both chronologically and thematically, Howe analyzes how American leaders and philosophers approached questions of moral improvement, education, and the relationship between individual virtue and republican citizenship. The text incorporates extensive primary source material and situates these philosophical discussions within their historical and cultural contexts. Each section explores a different facet of self-culture in America, from Puritan concepts of grace to Transcendentalist ideas about conscience and self-reliance. Howe pays particular attention to how these intellectual frameworks influenced political thought and social reform movements. The book presents self-cultivation as a crucial thread connecting religious, educational, and political thinking in early America. This examination of character formation illuminates broader questions about identity, morality and the foundations of American democracy.

Readers describe this as a detailed intellectual history that traces how American thinkers developed ideas about individual identity and self-improvement. Academic readers appreciate the connections Howe draws between seemingly disparate figures like Edwards, Franklin, and Lincoln. Positives: - Clear writing style makes complex philosophical ideas accessible - Strong research and documentation - Reveals patterns in American thought across different time periods Negatives: - Focus can be too narrow for general readers - Some sections are dense with academic language - Limited discussion of women and minorities in self-culture movement Ratings: Goodreads: 3.8/5 (32 ratings) Amazon: 4.2/5 (8 ratings) "Helps explain the roots of American individualism without getting lost in theory," notes one Amazon reviewer. A Goodreads reader criticized that it "stays too focused on elite white men's perspectives." Several academic reviews praise how it connects religious and secular views of self-improvement in early America.

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🔖 Daniel Walker Howe won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2008 for his book "What Hath God Wrought," a comprehensive study of America from 1815 to 1848 🔖 The concept of "self-improvement," which is central to the book, gained massive popularity during the antebellum period through organizations like the Lyceum movement, where Americans gathered for educational lectures and debates 🔖 Benjamin Franklin, one of the key figures discussed in the book, carried around a small notebook where he tracked his progress in 13 different virtues, creating one of America's first documented self-improvement systems 🔖 The book traces how Calvinist ideas of predestination evolved into a more democratic notion that anyone could improve themselves through conscious effort - a transformation that helped shape American identity 🔖 Abraham Lincoln, whose self-education is examined in the book, had less than one year of formal schooling but taught himself advanced mathematics, literature, and law through rigorous self-study