Customer Reviews

One Nation, Two Cultures

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It is amazing what a skilled writer with intellect can do within a realatively few pages. Professor Gertrude Himmelfarb does an incredible, balanced analysis of the tumultuous changes that have polarized many American cultural writers into ideologues. She reduces this polarization to simplicity without offending the staunchest zealot. Her basic premise is that the formerly dominant American culture has become the disssident culture and the formerly dissident culture has become the dominant culture. She discusses some of the resulting consequences.

She begins with an insightful historical perspective and then tackles tough American issues such as Civil Society, the Family, the Law and Polity, and Religion. She concludes with a summary of the ethics gap between the two cultures and some modest predictions. A fascinating read.

One reviewer called the book "A coherent, devastating attack." Another called it "An elegant , literate defense of nineteenth-century English mores and morals." It is much more. It will make you wonder what the future has in store for us....

Irving Kristol - Gertrude Himmelfarb's husband - once made the point that in the USA an 18 year old girl could dance nude in a bar, so long as she was paid the minimum wage. This book explores the existence of two cultures in the USA. Whilst pollsters and demographers can break down these cultures into many different groups, there is a broad line which can be drawn between the cultures. Cultures are largely defined by attitude in the modern world, as opposed to ethnic or Quaker garb, for instance, and Himmelfarb seeks to chart the salient differences in attitude. In that she is largely successful. It is a thought provoking book. Her use of Adam Smith's insights does her credit - there always was a looser culture based on the security of aristocratic position, which meant loose behaviour would not be economically disastrous for its practitioner. At day's end, the underlying viewpoint that it is unfortunate that there are two cultures, can be rejected or accepted as one chooses. Indeed, if the argument is accepted that there are two delineated cultures, then it clearly shows that government has no business interfering in the educating of children to try to homogenize the culture. The existence of two cultures removes the foundation for the confidence that demonstrating how to use a condom in school classes without parental permission is in any way appropriate or has ever been appropriate. Himmelfarb cannot be faulted for not dealing with subjects beyond her book's compass, but it should be appreciated that this book does not deal with, in any detail, the etiology of the counter-culture or its long march to cultural hegemony, nor does it suggest any concrete proposals for the protection of the traditional Puritan culture from governmental intrusion. For anyone who can remember both 1963 and 1971, it is likely to at least provide a conversation piece. Himmelfarb has done a sound job.

Professor Himmelfarb lays out in words what most Americans have known in varying degrees: there is a cultural divide between Americans that seems to evade an obvious or cohesive solution (at least for the time being). Her descriptions of this divide are unambiguous, and she speculates on possible solutions to the problem. There is no question that the 'everything must be permissible or we are not free' trend has had devastating effects on women and children in our society, and she provides perspectives on potential solutions. How do we balance the safety and well-being of our children (and therefore our future) without imposing unreasonable limits on individual freedom? Are any limits acceptable, or must we self-destruct in a distorted kamikaze defense of individual license? The greatest benefit of this book is to define the problem in a clear and intensely interesting way. As in her other work, Professor Himmelfarb never disappoints.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the truth about American culture today. Ms. Himmelfarb provides an excellent description of our very distinct class system, which is much different from previous class systems in history. She touches on how Adam Smith and Marx addressed classic class systems and how the whole class notion has become so very convoluted in today's environment. The book is well written. However, it is not written in traditional academia speak, even though she has admirable qualifications in the field. I was pleasantly surprised to see the honest truth, absent the current PC socialist rhetoric, from someone who has spent their career inside of academia. Although she provides an excellent description of the current cultural malaise, she comes up a little short on the root causes and only devotes a few pages to predictions.

All-in-all it should be read by all those who are interested in the truth.

The President of the United States-an admitted serial womanizer-is accused of raping a supporter twenty years ago, never denies the charge, and hardly a murmur is heard for him to come clean. Instances of children bringing arsenals to school and willingly murdering fellow classmates are becoming shamefully commonplace. Human excrement is used in a blasphemous "art exhibit" at a prestigious museum in Brooklyn and when New York City's mayor pulls its public funding, noisy bashaws condemn him not for his failure to close the den of perversion but for ending it taxpayer-funded hand outs. A nazi-admiring hit man, Jack Kevorkian, fulfills contracts on over 100 depressed and ailing individuals but goes free and becomes something of a cult celebrity before his murder-for-hire practice is shut down. Every one of these atrocities is a real situation in modern day America.

All of these developments occur with the encouraging support of many movers and shakers and much of the public at large gives them at least tacit approval. Still millions of others lament that such depravity his infiltrated the United States. How could both of those attitudes exist simultaneously. In her erudite treatise, historian Gertrude Himmelfarb argues that we have become one nation with two often opposing cultures. The two cultures she identified are similar in one way; each is having an increasingly difficult time comprehending the other one. Topics like abortion, homosexuality, profanity, a sex-obsessed and brutally violent popular culture, and cross-dressing, are discussed openly and often celebrated by one segment, while the other feels such pernicious activities should not even be mentioned in polite society. One side cherishes religion, traditional family, patriotism, self-control, self-respect (not self-esteem), time-honored manners, and personal responsibility; traits dismissed as archaic and somewhat harmful by the antipodal culture. One side fights to make it a crime to burn the American flag while the other strives to legalize same-sex marriage.

The author, a Victorian epicure, writes as objectively as possible but is obviously tendentious toward the scoffed at counter-culture of traditionalists. She repeatedly documents how crime rates, racial tensions, illegitimacy, declining educational standards and so many of the other problems that the progressive culture seems concerned about were indeed far better when the counter-culture's viewpoint was prevalent.

Fanatically liberal readers may disagree with many of the author's arguments, but only those whose minds have been slammed shut will fail to find her dialectics thought-provoking.

Gertrude Himmelfarb's One Nation, Two Cultures considers the growth and ideals of American society after its cultural revolution in the 1960s. From religion and family concepts to changes in the legal and social structure of American society, this provides an excellent survey of modern times.

I give away copies of this book regularly. I find it hard for people to deal with the cultural issues without sound bytes, propaganda, demagogary, etc. This book is a great antidote to those illnesses. You may agree or disagree with Himmelfarb, but I find that this book causes people to THINK if they take the time to read it seriously. Many people just want the bottom line, and, if they disagree with the bottom line, then they blow it off. I think it is hard to blow off Himmelfarb.

Don't get me wrong. Himmelfarb had me nodding my head in solid agreement with most of her more general points. Then I hit the section where she discusses the Boston gun project and gives total credit for the impressive reduction in juvenile gun homicides to one dinky little church-based program. Whoa, momma! I happen to know a lot about the Boston project and Himmelfarb is way off base on how it worked and who else was involved, namely the entire local, state and federal law enforcement and social service community. It made me very skeptical of the reliability of the rest of her "facts." I revised my judgment of the book from solid analysis to entertaining but subjective polemic. Too bad, because I agree with her bottom line.

I recently read Mrs. Himmelfarb's book and was thoroughly impressed by its cogent and well supported arguments. The book provides valuable information for both cultural conservatives and cultural liberals. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in an intelligent examination of modern American culture.

Himmelfarb writes an interesting jaunt into the cultural revolution and the aftermath that we now live within.

She focuses on the role of civil society, that undergirding structure of morals and values which transcends the laws and judicial process and makes them workable. We are told that this civil society is the "seedbed of virute." It mediates between extreme individualism and the all-powerful state.

The downgrading of heros and history and good works causing the moral dilemma we are in, but there are glimpses of working together to shape a new cultural ethic, a new civil society.

The dissident culture overtook the majority culture in the '60s and has prevailed against a somewhat diverse and apathetic, content, passive majority turned minority culture, now the dissident culture.

Wisely, Himmelfarb concludes that government intervention with the legislative/judicial solutions to cultural problems will not succeed.

Her prediction? Revival and expansion will occur for the dissident culture, however they will not regain the majority, nor will religion play the large role of influence they once enjoyed but rather moral grounds will replace them. Counterrevolutions are more difficult to achieve and maintain.

Well worth the read.