The Promise of American Life | The Influence of Croly's Book
Ozersky is a critic, essayist and American cultural historian. In this essay, Ozersky discusses why Herbert Croly’s barely remembered book was so influential—and what that influence reveals about both Croly’s time and our own.
Herbert Croly’s The Promise of American Life may be the most influential book nobody has heard of. Well, that may be an overstatement. Obviously, historians take the book seriously, as do scholars of political science, government, and public policy. But Croly’s magnum opus is hard to read, repetitive, and obscure. It does not seem, at first reading, to be a passionate manifesto for the reinvention of America so much as a meandering essay about the history of our democracy. Croly never uses one sentence when four sentences will do, or, for that matter, a page when a...
[The entire page is 1443 words long]
Join eNotes
The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:
Summary and Analysis – Themes – Characters – And much more...
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Tell a friend about The Promise of American Life at eNotes.
