| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sentimental Democracy: The Evolution of America's Romantic Self-Image. By Andrew Burstein. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999. xxiv, 406 pp. $28.00, ISBN 0-8090-8535-6.)

This is an ambitious book in the old American studies mode, making bold claims about the meaning of America from a mixture of literary sources. By advancing the term "sentimental democracy," Andrew Burstein tries to characterize the essence of American national identity as it developed in the period 1750–1828. The structure is essentially an intellectual narrative divided into chronologically defined chapters. Short biographical sketches and summaries of key events such as the Boston Tea Party and the War of 1812 give context to a constant stream of evocative quotations. The book is thus accessible to a general audience and can almost be read as a survey of the cultural and political history of the period. Little if any of the evidence or the methodology is new, but the book is innovative in seeking to combine several scholarly interpretations in a provocative and new way. . . .

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