Matthew W. Slaboch

My book, A Road to Nowhere, begins with a simple observation: slogans from several recent American presidential campaigns share an important feature in that, if taken seriously, each asks us to consider the nature and trajectory of historical change. Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” theme had an optimistic ring to it, focused particularly on American national improvement. Barack Obama’s campaign of “hope” was no less optimistic, but it did not explicitly exclude countries other than the United States from participating in positive “change.” And Donald Trump’s imploration to “Make America Great Again” combines pessimism about current national affairs with nostalgia for some unspecified past and optimism about the future. Which vision holds closest to the way change unfolds? Is progress a purely national affair? Or is it universal? And is it linear? Or does it follow a jagged path? Perhaps we have no reason to expect future progress at all – maybe there is no inevitable march toward the “right side of history.” Questions like these are of the sort with which I deal in my book. For answers, I look not to politicians, but to an eclectic mix of historians, philosophers, and novelists. Cross-national in scope, my book examines not only American writers, but German and Russian authors, too. I focus especially on criticisms of the idea of historical progress, which I suggest political theorists have unduly marginalized. I argue that, at a time of worldwide uncertainty about the future, we have good reason to study critics of the idea of progress: whether we are ultimately persuaded by their ideas or not, we should consider what they have to offer.