Ships without A Shore:
America’s Undernurtured Children
“An insightful critique of the restlessness of American life and its detrimental effects on children, Pierce's Ships Without A Shore reads like a twenty-first century supplement to Tocqueville's nineteenth century Democracy in America. For like Tocqueville, Pierce examines the moral and intellectual culture of the American regime that shapes the beliefs of its members and thereby the way they raise their children.
“Deeply learned, well researched, and emotionally perceptive, Pierce's analysis thus qualifies not only as a timely commentary on contemporary child-rearing but also as an enduring work of political philosophy about the American regime--a book for both parents and scholars.
“Pierce asks us to stop and think about the new frenetic way of life we impose on children and on ourselves, a way of life that manifests the American spirit but rushes child development.”
—Judith A. Swanson, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Boston University
“This book is brilliant… and should be required reading for all parents… I read it cover to cover with pencil in hand. I couldn’t stop myself from underlining passages and making notes in the margins… It will leave you wanting to talk about the ideas with someone… Let’s really get a dialogue going about this very important topic. Our children and the future of our country depend on it.”
—ChristineMM, The Thinking Mother
“Who's minding America's children? Arguing that children have been abandoned by a generation of self-indulgent parents, Pierce sounds the alarm for children in crisis. She explains how the definition of childhood has been radically undermined as baby boomers have embraced a lifestyle of materialism and moral relativism. She appeals to parents who have surrendered the privilege of nurturing their young to day care centers and media screens, under the politically correct banner of liberation — and her appeal is compelling.”
—Choice magazine
“Thoughtful parents will find Anne Pierce’s Ships Without A Shore a provocative, even disturbing book. Pierce challenges the ethos of self-fulfillment, personal achievement, and moral relativism propagated by conventional wisdom and popular culture, and draws a bleak picture of its effects on child rearing. She draws on her own experience as a parent as well as on neurological, psychological, and other social scientific research, taking a long historical perspective and appealing to the insights of an earlier philosophical and religious tradition. Pierce talks unfashionably and compellingly about children’s natural needs for stable parental love and care and for innocence protected from corruption.”
—Nathan Tarcov, Committee on Social Thought and Department of Political Science, University of Chicago
“Ships Without A Shore provides a vivid and stinging critique of the state of affairs of our young—from babies to adolescents. Exhibiting exceptional scholarly review, Anne R. Pierce provides a compelling discussion of the key issues that contribute to child development and health in our rapidly changing world, from parenting to peer and media influences. She raises concerns about the way in which modern forces are filling our children’s lives with information and busy activities that have empty materialistic goals and do not engender introspection or enjoyment of simple pleasures. She argues convincingly that without giving children appropriate time to reflect on the wonders of being alive during the right developmental stages, we may be raising an antisocial and non-creative generation of children who will grow to become adults unable to reach their imaginative, altruistic and emotionally balanced potential. This is an extremely important book on the challenges of child development at our current technological crossroads at which media is able to deliver incredible ‘programming’ to our youth to potentially disastrous effect.”
—James E. Swain MD, PhD, FRCPC, Child Study Center at Yale University
“Gutsy and provocative, Anne Pierce presents an articulate, no-holds-barred indictment of current child-rearing practices. Read this book, and you will have plenty to talk—and to think—about!”
—Jane M. Healy, PhD, Educational psychologist and author of “Endangered Minds; Why Our Children Don't Think and What We Can Do About It”
Wilson and Truman:
Mission and Power in American
Foreign Policy
“At last, a careful and illuminating analysis of Truman's debt to and improvement on the internationalist foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson. Grounded in a respect for American principles, faithful to the historical record, and open to the possibility that Wilson and Truman have something important to teach us, Pierce's book is a model of responsible scholarship. A remarkable achievement.”
—Bradford Wilson, James Madison Program for the Study of American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University
“A sensitive exploration of the tensions between America's understanding of its unique mission in the world, and the effects of the power that has been used to sustain and project that mission. Anne Pierce enriches our understanding of the past, and at the same time shows how a careful balancing of the requirements of mission and power has relevance for the present.”
—Dorothy V. Jones, Scholar-in-Residence, The Newberry Library
“Useful to those who would like to have more than a superficial understanding of the evolution of 20th century foreign affairs.”
—Akira Iriye, Harvard University
“In a welcome relief from too many works on foreign policy, Anne Pierce's Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman rejects the sort of reductionist view of political interpretation that sees foreign policy solely in terms of a single variable or a single dichotomy, economics or ideology, consensus versus change, liberal versus conservative, idealism versus realism. Her analysis of the formative periods of 20th-century American foreign policy is actually a bit broader than the subtitle of her work would suggest. By ‘mission’ she means the principles that have animated American politics since the founding; by ‘power’ she means the policies pursued by presidents Wilson and Truman in pursuit of those principles in the context of their time. How these two ideas are intertwined is the heart of her well-reasoned and tightly argued work.”
—Claremont Review
“The historical legacy of Woodrow Wilson has been the subject of considerable controversy. In this stimulating new work of historical interpretation, Anne Pierce shows convincingly that Wilsonian principles were an essential ingredient of America's Cold War foreign policy. By arguing powerfully that the Cold War cannot be comprehended in terms of realism or idealism alone, Pierce significantly enlarges our understanding of the role of realism and idealism in 20th century U.S. foreign relations.” —Frank Ninkovich, St. Johns University
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