Downsizing the U. S. A.

Legions of Americans, stalled in traffic jams or holding for the next available customer representative on the telephone, will agree with this book's central thesis: big is bad. The coauthors of The Search for Meaning, an economist and a theologian, espouse ""an abiding trust in the local, the specific, and the small as opposed to the universal, the general, and the large."" The point is hardly original. Nineteenth-century sociologists analyzed the functions and problems of bureaucracy, and wrote nostalgically about the small, intimate primary group in an increasingly secondary group society. Here the bigness problem is applied to our major social institutions--the economy, the city, the educational system, religion and the state--with inexact plans for downsizing each. Secession of states from the union and cities from states, is likewise not original as a solution, as the tragedy of the Civil War illustrates. In the 1960s the hippies advocated dropping out and forming tribes, a similar if less-developed idea for downsizing. Boxed quotes to support the theme are so numerous they become almost as important as the writing. Covering 2000 years in equally varying contexts, these asides suggest erudition but often mean nothing, like Robert Burns' ""The best laid plans of mice and men...,"" offered without explanation, or, like Robert Frost's ""Good fences make good neighbors"" used conversely to Frost's point about mindless tradition. The book is like going back to college, listening to compelling liberal professors, then realizing back in the dorm that the real world throws up hurdles that the academics never addressed. (July)