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Title: One Nation, Two Cultures by Gertrude Himmelfarb ISBN: 0-375-40455-4 Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pub. Date: November, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.08 (12 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: The Cultural Truth Not Minced With Political Correctness
Comment: 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.

Rating: 5
Summary: A balanced, thought-provoking analysis....
Comment: 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....

Rating: 5
Summary: The Loss & Hope of Recovery of Civil Society
Comment: 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.