When I was a doctoral student at UT Dallas in the early 2000s, I took a seminar on American Intellectual History, and one of the books assigned in the course was James T. Kloppenger’s excellent text, “The Virtues of Liberalism” (Oxford University Press, 2000). I remember vividly that my professor who himself an intellectual historian (he received his PhD from Yale) defended American liberalism with passion, enthusiasm, and intellectual energy. I was hooked and persuaded by his brilliant and coherent argument! lol

If I recall correctly other books we read in the course included Joyce Oldham Appleby’s superb text “Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination” (we may have read another book she wrote, “Telling the Truth About History”), “The Metaphysical Club : A Story of Ideas in America” by Louis Menand, the two volume texts, “The American Intellectual Tradition,” edited by David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, and many other texts that I don’t recall at the moment.

Anyway, I was impressed by Kloppenger’s balanced argument in the defense of American Liberalism tradition. I have gained great insights from his series of essay on the subject matter and I always find myself return to that book.

As I begin working on a new writing project, I ordered his magnum opus, the monumental intellectual history of democracy in the United States and Europe entitled “Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought” (2016), also published by Oxford UP.

I received the book today. The book is only 892 pages, and I love reading BIG books 📕 😊