Research Catalog

Title

• The simple life : plain living and high thinking in American culture / David E. Shi.

Author

Shi, David Emory

Publication

Athens : University of Georgia Press, c2001.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xiv, 332 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

"From Puritans and Quakers to Boy Scouts and hippies, our quest for the simple life is an enduring, complex tradition in American culture. Looking across more than three centuries of want and prosperity, war and peace, David E. Shi introduces a rich cast of practitioners and proponents of the simple life, among them Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Jane Addams, Scott and Helen Nearing, and Jimmy Carter." "In the diversity of their aspirations and failings, Shi finds that nothing is simple about our mercurial devotion to the idea of plain living and high thinking. Though we may hedge a bit in practice and are now and then driven by motives no deeper than nostalgia, Shi stresses that the diverse efforts to avoid anxious social striving and compulsive materialism have been essential to the nation's spiritual health."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

• National characteristics, American
• Simplicity
• United States > Civilization
• United States > Intellectual life
• United States > Social life and customs

Note

• Originally published: New York : Oxford University Press, 1985.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 283-323) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The Puritan way -- The Quaker ethic -- Republican simplicity -- Republicanism transformed -- Simplicity domesticated -- Transcendental simplicity -- Patrician simplicity -- at bay -- Progressive simplicity -- Prosperity, depression, and simplicity -- Affluence and anxiety.

ISBN

0820323403 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2001043070

OCLC

1243760850

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library