In The American Pragmatists Cheryl Misak (2013) offers a highly compelling and nuanced account of pragmatism’s founding and development. Her narrative is also unorthodox, as it undermines the story of pragmatism’s past that prevails among contemporary classical pragmatists.1 That Misak gladly acknowledges the deep sympathies between pragmatism and logical empiricism (2013: 156) is enough to place The American Pragmatists far outside the mainstream of classicalists’ self-understanding. Refreshingly, Misak’s book demonstrates just how distorted that self-understanding is. Yet Misak’s achievement is not (...) solely historiographical, for the dominant narrative among classicalists is also philosophically debilitating... (shrink)