In this volume, a host of distinguished scholars examine Richard Rorty's influence on twentieth-century American pragmatism and its commitment to achieving social democracy.

Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New Ways of Thinking? Chapter 3 Rorty, Radicalism, and Romanticism: The Politics of Gaze Chapter 4 Private Life and Public Commitment: From Walter Rauschenbusch to Richard Rorty Chapter 5 Lives of Irony: Randolph Bourne, Richard Rorty, and a New Genealogy of Critical Pragmatism Chapter 6 Is It Pragmatism? Rorty and the American Tradition Chapter 7 Is the Revival of Pragmatism Practical? Chapter 8 Narrative Politics: Richard Rorty at the "End of Reform" Chapter 9 Afterword: Intellectual Historians and Pragmatist Philosophy

John Pettegrew is assistant professor of history at Lehigh University. He is currently completing a book entitled Brutes in Suits: The Pathological Origins of American Masculinity, 1890-1920.