The Star-Spangled Republic
Examining the cosmic conceit at the heart of early American political rhetoric
Why does the American flag use stars to represent the states? In The Star-Spangled Republic, Eran Shalev answers this and many other questions, considering the cosmic imagery—so familiar today but so peculiar on reflection—that suffused the United States’ early political culture. In this comprehensive study, Shalev uncovers how “political astronomy”—the discussion and representation of politics through astronomical models, allusions, and metaphors—reflected and facilitated the emerging worldview that enabled Americans to justify and find meaning in the country’s new democratic modes of governance and its federal system. No other scholar has looked at American political rhetoric through this lens; in so doing, Shalev is able to explain in fascinating detail how Americans turned away from the sun of heliocentric monarchy toward the night sky full of federated constellations, and to discover republicanism imprinted in the firmament.
- Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia, author of Jefferson and the Virginians: Democracy, Constitutions, and EmpireEran Shalev’s dazzling account of American flags and their proliferating stars is a major contribution to early American cultural history. The Star-Spangled Republic reconstructs the lost language of “political astronomy,” showing how Americans discerned deeper meanings in darker skies, deploying solar and stellar metaphors to make sense of their world.
The concept of 'political astronomy,' a hidden-in-plain-sight phenomenon that waited for Shalev’s observant and curious mind to 'discover,' is alone worth the price of admission. Shalev’s explication of its origins, uses, and meanings establishes its significance in and implications for early American political culture and discourse, and his wide-ranging research and discerning analysis yields a number of thought-provoking and historically important insights. Bravo!- Tamara Plakins Thornton, The State University of New York at Buffalo, author of Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life
