The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War is a non-fiction history book by Perry Miller. It won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for History. Miller writing about "Evangelical Basis" (Book one), "The Legal Mentality" (Book two), "Science" (Book three).Max Byrd, Book Review, Harvard Crimson, September 25, 1965. Book three was incomplete. The Life of the Mind was published posthumously.
The Evangelical Basis has generated the most influence.Alfred Kazin, On Perry Miller, NY Rev. of Books (Nov 25, 1965); Clifford K. Shipton, Book Review, PMHB 266-67 (1966); Larzer Ziff, Book Review, 20 Western Hum. Rev. 166 (1966); Charles A. Barker, Book Review, 71 Am. Hist. Rev. 1056-57 (1966); Henry E. May, Perry Miller's Parrington, 35 Am. Scholar 562 (1966) (book review). The Legal Mentality has been relatively neglected.Lawrence Friedman, Heart against Head, 77 Yale Law Journal 1244 (1968); Stanley N. Katz, Looking Backward: The Early of American Law, 33 U. Chicago L. Rev. 867 (1966). The sublime is present through the book. The introduction was “The Sublime of American.”Elizabeth Miller, Foreword, The Life of the Mind at vii. Unfortunately, that was not written, because Miller was deceased before the book published. Nature against law and the law's independence are especially relevant of the second book.
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