| Contents: |
1. Introduction -- 2. Academic histories of self-help -- 3. The Protestant ethic and Puritan New England. The Weber thesis and the legacy of Puritanism -- What brought the Puritans to New England -- New England Puritan social history -- Puritan collective culture -- Boston and economic diversification -- Declension in New England -- Puritan literature and the Weber thesis -- A brief history of the histories of Puritan New England -- 4. Benjamin Franklin, Cotton Mather, and individualism. An imposing life -- Ben Franklin and Poor Richard -- Franklin and the Autobiography -- Franklin and the Puritan ethos -- The case of Cotton Mather : Puritanism, self-help, and historical influence -- Historical discussion of Franklin and his legacy -- 5. Revivalism, religious experience, and the birth of mental healing. Religious innovation : the Second Great Awakening -- Interpreting revivalism : historians seek understanding -- American romanticism : nature, harmony, and healing the self -- The coming of mesmerism and mind-cure -- Phineas Parkhurst Quimby -- Figures in the emergence of New Thought : Warren Felt Evans ; The Dressers : Annetta, Julius, and Horatio ; Ralph Waldo Trine ; Emma Curtis Hopkins ; Charles and Myrtle Fillmore and the Unity School of Christianity -- Twentieth-century heirs to New Thought : Emmet Fox (1886-1951) ; Ernest Shurtleff Holmes and the Church of Religious Science. |
Cite/Export