Contents -- 1 Individualism and Community in American Life -- Individualism's Contemporary Critics -- Puritanism and Community -- Classical Republicanism, Commerce, and Civic Virtue -- Abolitionism, Perfectionism, and Competition -- Progressivism and the Public Interest -- The Paradox of Crusading Capitalism -- 2 Radical Lockeanism -- Interpreting Locke on Property -- Tom Paine: Constructing an Egalitarian Locke -- Radicalizing Locke in the Jacksonian Era -- The Radical Reconstruction of Locke -- Populism: Locked In? -- The End of History? -- 3 Rival Visions of Equality: Process Versus Results -- Merchants and Radicals in Revolutionary Philadelphia -- Democrats and Republicans in Antebellum America -- Populists and Entrepreneurs in the Gilded Age -- The Origins of American Exceptionalism: From Paine to Jackson -- The Populist Challenge to American Exceptionalism -- The New Left: A New American Exceptionalism? -- The Demise of American Exceptionalism: Redefining Discrimination -- 4 Competing Conceptions of Democracy -- Anti-Federalists and Federalists: Mirrors and Filters -- Jacksonians and Whigs: Delegates and Trustees -- The Contemporary Debate Over Participation -- "Our Practice of Your Principles" -- 5 An Anti-Authority Consensus? -- The Competing Antipower Ethics of Tom Paine and James Madison -- The Two Federalists -- The "Splendid Venom" of Wendell Phillips -- Stephen Douglas and Popular Sovereignty -- Exit, Voice, and Loyalty -- 6 Hierarchy in America -- Virginia's Gentlemen-Planters -- New England Federalists -- Mugwumps, Bosses, and Capitalists in the Gilded Age -- Hierarchy in Modern America -- 7 Fatalism in America: The Case of Slavery -- Slavery as Hierarchy -- Slaves as Fatalists -- Slaves as Individualists -- Slaves as Communitarians -- The Social Relations of Slavery -- Br'er Rabbit and Amoral Individualism.

Fatalism as a Rational Response to a Capricious Environment -- Fatalism and Freedom -- 8 A Life of Hermitude: Thoreau at Walden Pond -- "A little world all to myself" -- "My greatest skill has been to want but little" -- "Trade curses every thing it handles" -- "Such sweet and beneficent society in Nature" -- "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in" -- "Read not the Times, Read the Eternities" -- The Hermit's Relationship to the Outside World -- 9 Culture, Context, and Consensus -- Classical Republicanism and Modern Liberalism -- Cultures in Context -- Conflict Within Consensus: The Theories of Samuel P. Huntington, Seymour Martin Lipset, and J. David Greenstone -- Explaining the Growth of Government: James Morone and the Democratic Wish -- The Subcultures of Daniel Elazar: Individualism, Traditionalism, and Moralism -- The American Jeremiad: From Consensus to Hegemony -- Culture: A Prism, Yes -- A Prison, No -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.