68 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating study of social leadership in America, January 13, 2000
Digby Baltzell uses the history of Philadelphia and Boston as very real examples of two types of leadership. In Boston, the "Boston Brahmin" elites formed a strong upper class that was not tolerant, certainly, but took responsibility for community life and exercised a tremendous influence on American culture, politics, arts, and science. In Philadelphia, the "Proper Philadelphians" were charming, tolerant--and deeply irresponsible, abandoning any role in governing the city and making it by common agreement the worst run city in the United States. When Philadelphia needed a mover and shaker, it imported some one from outside, like Ben Franklin.
Baltzell takes these difference back to the colonial period and the dramatic differences in the viewpoints of the Puritans who founded Boston and the Quakers who founded Philadelphia. He also sees these changes working forward as the old upper-class socialize immigrant elites into their respective patterns, producing the Kennedy clan out of Boston, and Grace Kelly out of Philadelphia. Many of the points here can also be seen in David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed.
Baltzell's bedrock conviction is that every society needs an upper class and is going to get one whether it likes it or not (the history of revolutions proves this rather conclusively). Those who see the very fact of social stratification as an personal affront will of course get affronted. The interesting point he makes though is that many things anti-elitists think are opposites actually go together. As he shows from his examples, social tolerance goes together with a much more blatantly money-conscious and just plain richer upper-class, and societies with widespread hostility to "elites" also show deep cynicism about their leadership and society in general, a cynicism merited by the generally short-sighted and narrowly (as opposed to broadly) selfish behavior of the upper class.
Does this sound familiar? Baltzell's final point is that in the wake of the sixties, which he compares to the English civil war (1640-1660) environment that spawned the Quakers and released "a host of self-righteous seekers" on the land," American leadership has moved much closer to the nakedly plutocratic and irresponsible leadership model found in Philadelphia. And along with this change in the upper class has grown egalitarianism, openness to immigrants, cynicism, leadership gridlock, and social tolerance. The irony of communal utopianism producing results exactly opposite of what was intended would not have surprised de Tocqueville, Baltzell's great mentor in sociology.
Don't think that this book is just about grand theory--it is filled with a host of fascinating portratits of the two cities' upper classes, and so contains a good deal of the achievers of America from colonial days to World War II. The simple quantitative analysis is effective and not off-putting.
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17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I could not set this book down., October 8, 2002
By A Customer
This was a great book. Besides all else mentioned already,it reads like a story. No theoretical arabesques, just nitty gritty factual details so you can see connectednesses for yourself. Baltzell's very factual illustrations of idealisms' realities and human tensions towards cultishness versus civic participation serve as a useful lense and compass to me ever since reading this book. I recommend it whenever I can, particularly to someone who, like me, may at one time, be shocked by a human experience or contrast and want to ask why. I'd recommend it to any one ever involved in a cult. Its readability is comforting and enthralling, and it is deeply seated in a sense of the continuity of history and human nature. I found it a healing book. I'm sorry Mr. Baltzell is no longer alive so I can thank him. Read every crumb of this book. Its thick, but allot the time.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not impressed, December 29, 2011
One reviewer said they couldnt put the book down. I didnt have any problems putting it down. Tried several times to get into it. As a Quaker, I felt there was a hint of bias against Quakers. I read about half of the book and decided to move on to something else.
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