Max Lerner’s America

Max Lerner has worked hard for twelve years to write America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today (Simon and Schuster, $10.00). It is a considerable achievement. So is the reading of it. With all admiration for the author’s effort, one must protest on behalf of outraged human nature at one thousand big pages. The sheer stunning bulk of the work makes critical appraisal almost impossible. The subjects covered range from American history, politics and economics to geography, literature, psychology, mores, morals, science, technology, class-structure, family life, education, taste, fashion, the press, television and foreign politics. The idea of drawing disciplines together into an “area-study” of America is good, but it makes prolixity, repetition and overlapping inevitable. Dr. Lerner, a good writer and free from sociological jargon, could have boiled all this down to a quarter of its length. If “ideas are weapons,” he has converted his sword into a gas-attack.

Why is the book so long? There is only one intelligible explanation of its turgidity: the book must be intended as a text for “Soc. 103” on the campuses of America. In other words, the student in Soc. 103 is going to have his mind and time monopolized by Dr. Lerner; and it is in the light of this probability that the book has to be examined.

RE

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Raymond English

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Max Lerner has worked hard for twelve years to write America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today (Simon and Schuster, $10.00). It is a considerable achievement. So is the reading of it. With all admiration for the author’s effort, one must protest on behalf of outraged human nature at one thousand big pages. The sheer stunning bulk of the work makes critical appraisal almost impossible. The subjects covered range from American history, politics and economics to geography, literature, psychology, mores, morals, science, technology, class-structure, family life, education, taste, fashion, the press, television and foreign politics. The idea of drawing disciplines together into an “area-study” of America is good, but it makes prolixity, repetition and overlapping inevitable. Dr. Lerner, a good writer and free from sociological jargon, could have boiled all this down to a quarter of its length. If “ideas are weapons,” he has converted his sword into a gas-attack.

Why is the book so long? There is only one intelligible explanation of its turgidity: the book must be intended as a text for “Soc. 103” on the campuses of America. In other words, the student in Soc. 103 is going to have his mind and time monopolized by Dr. Lerner; and it is in the light of this probability that the book has to be examined.