Inside U.S.A. - Softcover

Gunther, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565843584 ISBN 13: 9781565843585

Publisher: The New Press, 1997

Synopsis

A veteran journalist explores the United States at the end of World War II, gathering facts, recording his impressions, and foretelling with surprising accuracy problems that would plague the country for the remainder of the twentieth century

About this title

From the Back Cover:

For Inside U.S.A., John Gunther set out from California and traveled the entire country. His frank, lucid observations along the way - on race relations, labor, the Tennessee Valley Authority, farm life, the politics of the big cities, and much else - yield fascinating insight into life fifty years ago. Now, on the brink of the millennium, this fiftieth anniversary edition of Inside U.S.A. provides an invaluable picture of America as it was then, both for those old enough to remember it and for young people who may be astonished to see the ways the country has changed.

Review:

"America," Winston Churchill said, "stands at this moment at the summit of the world." The moment was August, 1945. Nazi Germany had fallen, the atomic bomb had been dropped, imperial Japan was about to surrender, the European Allies were battered and spent, and the United States bestrode the narrow world. It was a new America, hardly known to the world--or to itself. This was the America that John Gunther portrayed in the vivid and acute reportage of Inside U.S.A., which is to be reissued this month by the New Press.

This book, now half a century old, is an astonishing tour de force. It presents a shrewd, fast-moving, sparkling panorama of the United States at this historic moment of apparent triumph. . . .

Inside U.S.A. does not pretend to be a profound analysis of American civilization, in the manner of Tocqueville and Bryce. But Gunther had his own quiver of penetrating questions. His objective was to identify the forces that made "this incomparable Golconda of a country" move. Wherever he went, he asked, Who runs this state or city? What are the basic and irreversible sources of power--social power, economic power, political power? He interviewed more than 900 people and emerged with more than a million words of notes. And he did it all himself, without professional researchers or stringers. . . .

Inside U.S.A. is far from a panegyric. Gunther listed "the worst American characteristics--covetousness, ignorance, absence of esthetic values, get-rich-quickism, bluster, lack of vision, lack of foresight, excessive standardization, and immature and undisciplined social behavior." America was still "an enormously provincial nation," he wrote. "I do not know any country that is so ignorant about itself." Have we improved noticeably in the half century since? -- The Atlantic Monthly, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

A superb compendium. The whole picture is true and to describe such a vast complex and get anywhere near the truth is a magnificent achievement. -- Rebecca West

By far the best of the Inside series. . . If any book can tell us what it means to be an American, this is it. -- Clifton Fadiman

The richest treasure-house of facts about America that has ever been published, and probably the most spirited and interesting. -- Sinclair Lewis

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1565843584
• ISBN 13: 9781565843585
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 1004