One Nation, After All : What Americans Really Think About God, Country, Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homosexuality, Work, The Right, The Left and Each Other

Concluding that all cultural divides are exaggerated, this monumental critique of American culture finds a remarkable uniformity of opinion among middle class Americans on a wide variety of supposedly divisive issues. Reprint.

Few academics write as crisply as the sociologist Alan Wolfe, and even fewer are capable of making the penetrating insights that sprinkle the pages of this engaging study of suburban psychology. Based on 200 extensive interviews with middle-class Americans, Wolfe's study uncovers a striking tolerance. Americans, according to the author, can be quite harsh when judging their own behavior, but they exhibit a hands-off approach with others. (Wolfe also cites an exception to this rule: homosexuality.) Americans are not torn apart by any kind of cultural war, contrary to the claims of intellectuals on both the right and left. Instead, writes Wolfe, they are a practical people willing to accept social change. Forget the shallow opinion polls that appear every few days in the news. One Nation, After All comes closer to the real pulse of the American people than just about any other you will find.