Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character - Hardcover

"Readable and entertaining.... [A] formidable achievement." (Financial Times) "A thoughtful assessment of the patterns of American life over the course of the past several centuries.... All in all, it is a lively and intriguing effort to understand the most important elements of American life." (Times Higher Education) "His measured but upbeat view of the evolving American experience will disappoint the hell-in-a-handbasket crowd.... The result is a shrewd, generous, convincing interpretation of American life." (Publishers Weekly, starred review) "Brave and ambitious.... [Fischer's] book will take its place in a distinguished scholarly tradition that historians have all but abandoned for nearly half a century." (David M. Kennedy, Boston Review) "Fischer has done scholars and lay readers alike an enormous service.... Made in America is exactly the sort of grand and controversial narrative, exactly the sort of bold test of old assumptions, that is needed to keep the study of American history alive and honest." (New Republic) "The book is a sociologist's take on American social history, a distillation of Fischer's vast reading.... He writes not only for his fellow academics but also for the general literate public." (Daniel Walker Howe, Wilson Quarterly, Top Ten Books of 2010)"

Our nation began with the simple phrase "We the People." But who were and are "We"? Who were we in 1776, in 1865, or in 1968, and is there any continuity in character between the we of those years and the nearly 300 million people living in the radically different America of today? With "Made in America", Claude S. Fischer draws on decades of historical, psychological, and social research to answer that question by tracking the evolution of American character and culture over three centuries. He explodes myths - such as that contemporary Americans are more mobile and less religious than their ancestors, or that they are more focused on money and consumption - and reveals instead how greater security and wealth have only reinforced the independence, egalitarianism, and commitment to community that characterized our people from the earliest years.