Sea Changes : Edward Everett Root : 9781911204862 : 1911204866 : 30 Jun 2019 : This acclaimed landmark work ? in this substantially revised second edition ? is a key study of the American cultural experience. It examines the formation of an American personal and national identity through the experience of emigration. It asks what was the 'American difference', and what constitutes the American character. It explores in detail the crucial influence of emigration from Europe. It explores American readiness to change, to break with the past, and its faith in future possibilities. Every one of these supposed qualities is traced by Professor Fender to the psychology of emigration. As a new nation, America had to create and define itself. As the rebellious child of a distant but powerful parent America had to struggle against a metropolitan center with which it shared a language and a legal system, but it strenuously defined itself differently. This work is about the power of American ideolo