What ideas made our country what it is today? In her latest book, UW-Madison history professor Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen explores the history of thinkers and their thoughts in shaping public thought about liberty, religion, republicanism, and democracy.

It’s called The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History, published in 2019 by Oxford University Press. She joined host George Dreckmann on the phone in this pledge drive edition of Madison BookBeat.

About the guest: 

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti and Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at UW-Madison, where she specializes in US intellectual and cultural history across philosophy, political and social theory, literature, and the arts.

She is also the author of American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (University of Chicago Press, 2012) as well as co-editor of Protest on the Page: Essays on Print and the Culture of Dissent since 1865 (UW Press, 2015) and The Worlds of American Intellectual History (Oxford University Press, 2016).