xx Preface
Today, when we want to find out who referred to “the bright sunshine of human rights” or how the
assembly line was born, we can get on the computer, click on a browser, choose a search engine, type in
what we want to know more about, and start learning. Not to suggest that we are of an advanced age,
but when the editors were young, we turned to encyclopedias. Ideas and Movements That Shaped
America is an encyclopedia of its subject, seeking to be thorough but without making an attempt to be
comprehensive—that would be too detailed, too long, and probably downright boring. We believe it will
be of interest to a variety of age groups, from middle-school students to someone who comes upon it in
a library and bookstore—and, whoever he or she may be, wants to know more about the American past
and present. We also hope that the original sources will provide some of the flavor or additional under-
pinning to enhance the reader’s understanding of the historical commentary and give entries some con-
text. And we desire that readers will take advantage of the listing of further readings with the entries
and in the back matter to dig more deeply into the subjects. Each entry has been the subject of at least
multiple publications and, we are sure, will be the subject of still others—especially entries like “Internet
Nation,” which is such a recent and changing phenomenon that a lot of scholarship remains to be done.
But that does not mean that the final word on other older subjects has been written. Not at all—either
here or in other works. Occasionally, people outside of the historical profession complain about “revi-
sionists” who offer new or different interpretations of events, and claim to want “the facts.” The fact is,
though, that even facts are open to interpretation or discussion. We know that Thomas Jefferson wrote
the Declaration of Independence, but it went through more than one draft. It reflected not only the work
and views of other founding fathers, but also the issues that divided Americans even then; thus, the Sec-
ond Continental Congress deleted Jefferson’s attack on slavery or the slave trade, which was a source of
displeasure to members from some states—and that attack blamed King George III for the institution
when it had existed for at least a century before he became king. How many of those facts are relevant?
What do they mean? Historians have gone back and forth on that subject for centuries and will continue
to do so.
If even facts are sources of argument, then ideas and the movements they produce or come from
would, logically, figure to cause even more argument. The result of an idea may be tangible, but what
about the idea itself? And if the idea is not tangible, how “factual” is it? How important is it? The ideas
and movements that we have chosen to explain in this book have been important parts of the lives of
almost all Americans. Some of them have been or remain highly controversial. We doubt that what fol-
lows will be likely to end any of that controversy, but we hope and think that this work will shed light on
the ideas and movements that have, indeed, shaped America.
