This course will survey the history of political and social thought in the United States from the arrival of English speaking peoples until the present day through an exploration of writings, speeches, and letters. But like any survey of such an extensive period that encompasses such diverse literatures and possibilities, this course has been constructed from conscious choices in terms of what to include and exclude. For this semester, I have placed foremost the question of how the American political tradition has made its piece with merican economic history. While the most persistent American economic system has been capitalism, we will take pains to note the other systems which were present in early America, mercantilism and slavery, and we will be especially careful to denote how changes in the forms of American capitalism manifest themselves in American political arguments. We will also read authors who are often read for other purposes (say, Thoreau on nature and Betty Friedan on feminism) in terms of their encounter with capitalism and mass society. This course is also notable for what it leaves out or treats too minimally: race, gender, religion, immigration, the Civil War and Reconstruction, federalism, Imperialism, and foreign relations. These are conscious choices made because of the lack of time to achieve all goals and to shape a coherent narrative that reaches from the Founding to the present. No one regrets the neglect of these issues more than myself .