The Business of America

The Business of America examines the complex linking of business and nationhood in post-war United States literature against the backdrop of changing concepts of the nation in the field of American Studies.

The first part of the book examines how white male literary culture has been largely hostile to business during this period and how it has represented transnational shifts in the nature of business as threats to supposedly American values like the individual, the family, or freedom. The book charts the way that such an uneasiness towards business relies upon a discourse about America, business and empire that is increasingly untenable in the post-war world.

By way of comparison, The Business of America looks at how literature by women and by writers from different racial, ethnic and sexual groups often deals with business from the more localised angle of work. Graham Thompson shows how this attention to work provides a less abstract and more oppositional approach to the connection between business and America.