Horace M. Kallen in the Heartland

"Throughout, we never lose sight of the significance of cultural pluralism, making this terrific book important not only for scholars of US intellectual history, but for anyone interested in diversity in America."—Indiana Magazine of History

"[Steiner] does us a favor by resurrecting an overlooked philosopher whose ideas on American pluralism are still fresh."—Cleveland Review of Books

"Steiner is an eloquent writer who has mastered the relevant primary and secondary sources to weave an informative, detailed, and often engaging narrative. [He has] provided an important new perspective on Kallen’s life and work."—American Jewish History

“Offer[s] a powerful meditation on “the power of place in individual’s lives” and how the particularities of place—not limited to the Midwest—mold lifelong intellectual commitments.”—Annals of Iowa

“Michael C. Steiner’s innovative study of Horace M. Kallen’s impact on the American intellectual landscape pays close attention to the hitherto neglected midwestern backdrop that shaped Kallen’s theory of cultural pluralism. Deploying a multifaceted lens, Steiner’s analysis of Kallen’s distinctive profile and the dynamic complexity of the American public arena is probing and generative; it also updates the scholarship surrounding Kallen in productive and important ways. Researchers and lay readers interested in American intellectual history, American cultural history, and the history of the American Jewish experience will find no better guide to American society’s pluralist tradition and Kallen’s outsized influence on the American scene.”—Mark Raider, professor of modern Jewish history, University of Cincinnati

“Horace Kallen, champion of cultural pluralism, emerged fully from the ethnically and racially diverse intellectual ferment of America’s Upper Midwest. Richly evoking early twentieth-century culture wars that pitted nativists/white nationalists against non-Anglo immigrants and people of color, Michael C. Steiner’s eloquent, erudite study examines and situates Kallen’s key role in a not-so-bygone moment that resonates powerfully with our current fraught era.”—James P. Leary, Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, University of Wisconsin–Madison

“Horace M. Kallen in the Heartland tells the story of cultural pluralism through two world wars, European fascism and genocide, and on to the era of Jim Crow and the nascent struggle for civil rights, when Kallen finally embraced what had always eluded him: the crucial importance of black art and experience to American culture. With empathy and wisdom Steiner dramatizes Kallen’s late-life reckoning with ‘expansive pluralism as the deepest form of patriotism.’”—Esther Schor, Leonard L. Milberg ‘53 Professor of American Jewish Studies and professor of English, Princeton University, and author of Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language

“This insightful study offers a welcome historical corrective to contemporary US preoccupations with obscure ‘threats’ posed by ‘outsiders.’ Horace M. Kallen in the Heartland traces the early twentieth-century intellectual origins of Horace Kallen’s broader and more generous view that cultural pluralism is a keystone of American society. Steiner presents surprising evidence that Kallen’s brief midwestern sojourn played a formative role in shaping his ideas, which resonate into the present.”—C. Elizabeth Raymond, Grace A. Griffen Endowed Chair in American History, University of Nevada, Reno