Editors' Note
We have made this issue a special issue because it has a certain thematic unity. Sometimes directly and sometimes obliquely (but still pointedly), all the contributions deal with the history of liberalism; and together they suggest new avenues of approach to that subject within a transatlantic framework. At issue in the forum on Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club is how we are to understand the significance of American Pragmatism, which arguably has been critical to giving modern American liberalism its distinctive profile. As Kenneth Cmiel makes clear, John Higham's work has been centrally concerned with the potentialities and the pitfalls of liberal pluralism in the American context - and Higham has been an important liberal voice in his own right. In J.W. Burrough's The Crisis of Reason, reviewed here by Suzanne Marchand, we see European liberalism entering a crisis in the face of "the modern" even as it finds new groundings from the mid-nineteenth century onward.
more.

Liberal Cultures and Their Critics: The Trials of a Transatlantic Discourse
Alan Ryan ~ Liberal Political Theory: Always Unpopular
Sarah Maza ~ Anti-Bourgeois Consciousness and French Identity in Historical Perspective
Gerald Izenberg ~ Reconciling Individuality and Individualism in European Liberalism
George Kateb ~ A Glance at Democratic Individuality
Ruth H. Bloch ~ Utopianism, Sentimentalism, and Liberal Culture in America
James Kloppenberg ~ Aspirational Nationalism in America
Dorothy Ross ~ Liberalism and American Exceptionalism

Roundtable: Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club and the Problem of Pragmatism
Bruce Kuklick ~ Menand and Self-Reliance
James Kloppenberg ~ Teaching The Metaphysical Club
Giles Gunn ~ Reflections on Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club
Karen Hanson ~ Pragmatism in Situ: Philosophical Accuracy and Historical Context
Thomas Haskell ~ Menand's Postdisciplinary Project
Louis Menand ~ Reply

Book Reviews
Suzanne Marchand ~ The Old Intellectual History and the New?
     A review of J. W. Burrow's The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914
Kenneth Cmiel ~ John Higham: The Contrarian as Optimist
     A review of John Higham's Hanging Together: Unity and Diversity in American Culture

In Memoriam
Yehoshua Arieli, 1914-2002 ~ by Stephen J. Whitfield