Recently this book ("In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications in Early America", by Konstantin Dierks) came to my attention when I purchased another title in the same "Early American Studies Series" from the University of Pennsylvania. Given the subject and my perusal of some of the reviews (e.g.,.http://www.common-place.org/interim/reviews/howell.shtml), I have resolved to read this book in the near future..
Here is what the author says about the book:
"My first book,.In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications.in Early America,.published in 2009, focused on the cultural, social, economic, and political history of letter writing and communications.in the early anglophone Atlantic World. Letter writing steeped the white middle class in imperatives of self-improvement and vulnerabilities of personal agency, while assuring them of their social innocence, their technical credentials, and their moral deserving. The force of this social myopia is as critical as racism, I argue, in explaining the glaring dearth of moral conscience underwriting the legalization of massive violence toward Native Americans and African-Americans so endemic to the eighteenth century."
Well, I'm not (usually) one to judge a book unread, but I thought readers of the Nib might be interested in knowing of this books existence.
Here is what the author says about the book:
"My first book,.In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications.in Early America,.published in 2009, focused on the cultural, social, economic, and political history of letter writing and communications.in the early anglophone Atlantic World. Letter writing steeped the white middle class in imperatives of self-improvement and vulnerabilities of personal agency, while assuring them of their social innocence, their technical credentials, and their moral deserving. The force of this social myopia is as critical as racism, I argue, in explaining the glaring dearth of moral conscience underwriting the legalization of massive violence toward Native Americans and African-Americans so endemic to the eighteenth century."
Well, I'm not (usually) one to judge a book unread, but I thought readers of the Nib might be interested in knowing of this books existence.
