Harold E. Stearns’ Critique of American Culture in the Book, Civilization in the United States :: American America History

Harold E. Stearns’ Critique of American Culture in the Book, Civilization in the United States Harold E. Stearns and his colleagues set out on a mission to enlighten and inform the American society of the 1920’s in their book entitled Civilization in the United States. Thirty-three authors with the aid of an editor, Stearns, instead produced a highly controversial and inadequate account of certain aspects of life in American society. According to critic Arthur Schlesinger the writers of Civilization in the United States fell short of their goal of producing a critical depiction of American society and instead wrote "supercilious reflections" (167). There are three main themes presented in each essay included in Civilization. They are as follows: Americans are hypocritical, American civilization is not Anglo-Saxon nor nationalistic, and finally American social life lacks emotion. Stearns chose his writers very carefully. He wanted each of them to be blunt and straight to the point in their essays, especially when writing on these three themes. In his preface, Stearns himself states: "If these main contentions seem severe or pessimistic, the answer must be: we do not write to please; we strive only to understand and to state as clearly as we can" (vii). It is obvious that Harold Stearns wanted to voice his ideas and those of his counterparts in an open, bold fashion and that is why each essay touches on the main themes mentioned above. Critic Arthur Schlesinger, however mentions in his critique of Civilization that if there are any common themes in these essays at all, that they certainly are not the ones Harold Stearns mentions. Rather, Schlesinger hints that the theme is that Americans are "cocksure but bewildered children in a world [they] cannot understand" which is new and constantly changing (168). He feels that overall, each author wrote his or her own opinion and didn't follow a common theme in the true sense of the word. It is apparent to me that the critic has a valid point and his opinion coincides with my own opinion. Stearns may have had a common theme in mind when he organized the writing of Civilization, but it seems as if the authors went a bit off track. Some of the topics discussed in Civilization in the United States were "The Intellectual Life," "The City," "Economic Opinion," "History," "Business," "Engineering," "Politics," "Journalism," and "Philosophy" to name a few. As critic Arthur Schlesinger notes in his review of the book, the topics and authors included in this account of