cover image American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword

American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword

Seymour Martin Lipset. W. W. Norton & Company, $47 (356pp) ISBN 978-0-393-03725-8

In this dense and extravagantly footnoted study, political scientist and Hoover Institute fellow Lipset (The First New Nation) marshals a daunting amount of material to defend an old but often maligned idea--that the United States, as a nation ""born modern,"" without feudal baggage, remains (mostly for the better) culturally, politically and economically distinct from the European societies that spawned it. Lipset marches impassively over widely scattered territories here--the roots of American moralism and utopianism, the difficult history of American trade unionism, the unique experiences of blacks and Jews, the origins of so-called political correctness in the universities--and much of what he discovers is interesting. But the airless sociological prose and emphasis on opinion polls and ""values"" surveys may leave nonspecialist readers feeling somewhat oxygen-deprived. Lipset's book is most readable when he examines--as in his last chapter--possible gaps between American perception and reality. (Feb.)