Chapter 1: Understanding the Pursuit of Happiness
Chapter 2: Tom Wolfe’s Status Hungry America
Chapter 3: Walker Percy’s Search
Chapter 4: Edith Wharton’s Case for Happiness and Society
Chapter 5: Hawthorne’s Hope for Friendship and Happiness
Chapter 6: Sharing the Pursuit of Happiness
Elizabeth Amato is assistant professor of political science at Gardner-Webb University.
In our pursuit of happiness, Americans often look first to secure
our comfort, prosperity, and self-esteem. Elizabeth Amato uses some
of the best writers that American literature has to offer to upend
this notion. Through a keen reading of such novelists as Walker
Percy, Tom Wolfe, and Edith Wharton, she reveals the truth that
life’s challenges confound the pursuit of material happiness, and
through them, offers a reminder that a more lasting and moderate
happiness flows from ordered liberty and a concern for the truth
and beauty of ordinary life.
*Brian A. Smith, Liberty Fund, Inc.*
Elizabeth Amato has called a truce in the quarrel between
philosophy and poetry. Drawing on 19th and 20th century novels she
demonstrates how literature better prepares us for the pursuit of
happiness. Amato’s reading of works by Tom Wolfe and Edith Wharton
offer new insights into liberalism. The Pursuit of Happiness is an
important contribution to the study of politics and literature.
*Natalie Taylor, Skidmore College*
In an age dominated by self-help books promising to cure any number
of problems, it seems that America’s on-going “pursuit of
happiness” might be solved in just twelve easy steps. Exploring the
science of contemporary happiness studies, Elizabeth Amato artfully
suggests that a more nuanced way to think about the possibilities
of happiness lies in the work of American novelists. Exploring the
work of several writers, Amato convincingly shows how these authors
address the myriad possibilities for happiness in ways that allow
the reader to freely determine her own best course. Should such
attempts come short, Amato’s prescription of returning to American
novelists is a path to greater happiness in itself.
*Sara MacDonald*
This book is an ideal resource for faculty in political science
looking to develop undergraduate courses on American political
thought, American novels and political theory, or in politics and
literature more broadly. It is also valuable for the many
insightful readings of important works of American literature it
presents, and as a development of Zuckert’s case for the novel as a
work of political theory. Most importantly, however, Amato’s
American novelists allow for an exploration of the sources of human
flourishing above, below, before, and, yes, after liberalism. . . .
In an understated way, Amato makes the case for why if we care
about our regimes and our happiness, we should get off social media
and pick up a novel instead. Amato’s recommendations of these tales
and the wild and vibrant pursuit of happiness in America are a
happy corrective to our current prognostications about liberalism’s
end.
*VoegelinView*
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