1st Edition

Culture and Liberty Writings of Isabel Paterson

Edited By Stephen Cox Copyright 2015
    308 Pages
    by Routledge

    308 Pages
    by Routledge

    Isabel Paterson is widely recognized as an advocate of radical individualism and a prophet of the libertarian movement. She influenced a wide variety of libertarian and conservative writers and public figures, from Ayn Rand to William F. Buckley, Jr. In her own time, Paterson was noted as a literary critic and novelist, and one of the wittiest writers in America. She is best known for The God of the Machine, also published by Transaction.

    Culture and Liberty includes many of Paterson's works that are out of print or have never before been published. Stephen Cox collected Paterson's words on themes she favored, illustrating leading features of her accomplishments and her views. Paterson's way of combining individualist ideas with provocative writing made people look forward to her next pronouncement on American culture. Her fame while she lived and worked and the continuing interest in her ideas and writing are monuments to a complex but strongly unified personality.

    Paterson remains one of the most distinctive voices in American literary history—as this selection of her writings will indicate. This book is a must read for English majors, literary critics, humanities scholars, and students of American culture.

    Introduction

    A Note on the Text

    Abbreviations and References

    People Mentioned

    Part I. Essays and Reviews
    1. The True Individualist: Thoreau
    2. The Reformer as Tyrant
    3. What Is Known as a Practical Man
    4. The Achievement of the Wright Brothers
    5. American Concepts
    6. But Is It True?
    7. What Went Wrong
    8. The Devolution of America
    9. AQuestion of Privilege
    10. Save Us, at Least, from Boredom
    11. The Nobel Prize in Politics
    12. The Culture of Communism
    13. Freedom and Control
    14. Whose Agent Is He?
    15. Monkey-gland Economics
    16. The Elusive Law of Wages
    17. The Man with One Idea
    18. What Do They Do All Day?
    19. Adventures in Biology and Bunk
    20. The Riddle of Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott Decision
    21. Has the World Grown Smaller?
    22. A Man of Destiny
    23. Learning to Read: Child's Play
    24. What the Christmas Story Means

    Part II. Letters
    25. Letters to 1940
    26. Letters, 1940–1949
    27. Letters, 1950 and After

    Index

    Biography

    Stephen Cox