Gura, P: Truth's Ragged Edge The Rise of the American Novel

"An enthralling work of literary recovery . . . If you think that academics now only write for each other, this book will come as a revelation . . . In his acknowledgments, Gura writes that his book was partly inspired by Edmund Wilson's magisterial "Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War." Future scholars will be comparably inspired by "Truth's Ragged Edge.""
--Michael Dirda, "The Washington Post ""Comprehensive and fresh . . . spirited . . . ["Truth's Ragged Edge" is] driven by a desire to encourage a new generation to read a forgotten trove of writing."
--"The Times Literary Supplement ""Lucid . . . a rewarding and reliable guide."
--Michael Gorra, "The Wall Street Journal ""Fascinating . . . a nimble synthesis of a vital period in literary history, tracing our homegrown novel's evolution from morality tale to self-aware interiority, traversing and incorporating the countless currents of regionalism, faith, urbanization, and exploration that swept across the nation's early decades."
--"The Weekly Standard ""Certain to become a new classic . . . a masterful examination of the origins of the distinctive American novel . . . a must read for the serious book lover who wishes to understand how the novel became so manifestly American, to understand how strikingly American thought evolved and created a form widely divergent from its European origins . . . "Truth's Ragged Edge" is a major contribution to literary criticism and will be read and appreciated in American studies classes for years to come."
--About.com "[Gura] breathes new life into old and largely forgotten novels . . . this book creatively revives the age of ecstatic religion, the steam locomotive, and the daguerreotype. It charts the steady rise of female authorship and of a book-hungry American middle class. It captures the movement, as one later chapter heading reads, 'from a theology of the feelings to an ethic of love.' A