When Editor Russell Lynes published his light-hearted analysis in the February 1949 Harper's, Harry S. Truman had just been elected President in his own right, Gerald Ford was a freshman in Congress, and the median U.S. family income was $3,107. At the top of the best-seller list were Lloyd Douglas's religious novel, The Big Fisherman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe. Television was still a novelty.
Tongue in cheek, Lynes sought to gauge the social significance of "taste"...
A debate on major issues in resources and the future.
The nation's bicentenary has spurred a number of leading scholars to take another look at the American Revolution. Some have uncovered new data on social and economic life in colonial America. Others have sought anew to explain the Revolution's causes and effects, its leaders' strengths and weaknesses. Here, Sociologist Robert Nisbet discusses the Revolution's social impact.