The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society Paperback – September 17, 1998

The Disuniting of America:I have just read the 1998 edition. Mr. Schlesinger has written a serious, nuanced set of essays about our multicultural society. Although the book is greater than the sum of related of essays: they were not published separately. The common theme is expressed in the Forward: "The more people feel themselves adrift ... the more they crave a politics of identity."Mr. Schlesinger is no enemy of multiple cultures. In 1947, Schlesinger, together with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Minneapolis mayor and future Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, economist and longtime friend John Kenneth Galbraith, and Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, founded Americans for Democratic Action. He favors diversity, which may confuse some readers, as his thesis is not to eliminate it, but to be wary of its stridency.He favors a single America, "governed together ... instilled by shared history, values, and language." The book is punctuated with stories and writings of 19th and 20th Century writers. (One of the more interesting features of the book is the Appendix, in which Mr. Schlesinger lists and summarizes a (baker's) dozen works that epitomize America, from "The Federalist," "Democracy in America," to "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and Henry Adams "Education," among others.He cannot abide the erasure of history. "For better or for worse, American history has been shaped more than anything else by British tradition and culture. To deny this perhaps lamentable but hardly disputable fact would be to falsify history." "The purpose of history is to promote not group self-esteem, but understanding of the world." He would not favor the destruction of monuments, now so prevalent, as it is in and has been recently in Iraq.Mr. Schlesinger traces much of the enthusiasm for multicultural extremism to the academic world, who, on the whole, define what we are taught and how -- and beyond. "The University of Pennsylvania gives blacks - 6 percent of the enrollment - their own yearbook." (His quote from Reinhold Niebuhr is resonant: "The chief source of man's inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men." Today, many would dismiss this statement because it uses only the male personal pronoun, as tribalism has grown steadily worse since the author wrote it.) Ironically, the assault on our history is being led by the "analytical weapons" developed in the West."This book is easy to read and thought-provoking. It is a prophecy of worse to come. It was written over twenty years ago. It has come.

This book is one of the most compelling reads of non-fiction I have ever come across. Without a doubt, this is one of few books I found of real use in college, and I continue to read and reflect upon it to this day. In fact, I would call this book essential for any social studies curriculum.Arthur Schlesinger takes the issues of a new PC nation and puts them into real perspective. He is both pro-culture and pro-heritage, but he stands against the idea that cultural identity means a seperation of the American People. Taking on a myriad of topics, Schlesinger explains with great simplicity, straight-forwardness, and honesty how multi-culturalism can be taken too far, taken to absurd conclusions. Essentially, Schlesinger is letting us know that not everything is best when it is presented through the eyes of multi-culturalism.I read the book in a single sitting. Once I started to read, I was drawn in more and more. Even if you don't agree with his premise, Schlesinger writes in such a way that there is no ambiguity to what he is saying. Knowing Schlesinger's politics for some may make this all the more shocking, but I have to ask those who oppose the message of this book whether they are upset that he is saying these things in general, or if they are upset because a "liberal" is saying these things.In my opinion this book is of critical importance to understand the second half of the 20th century in America.

This book is an exceptionally well-researched and readable book that addresses the possible breaking up of the U.S. into special interests groups, sometimes by race, sometimes by nationality and often-times by politics and others. Mr. Schlesinger, a true liberal, warns the reader of the dangers of destroying the national glue that holds us together. To characterize his argument, I believe he is sounding a warning. That warning is the movement towards the Balkanization of the U.S..Coincidently, Pat Buchanan has written a similar book, from the Right, named "Day of Reckoning". Mr. Buchanan comes to the same conclusions as Mr. Schlesinger. The right and the left agree that the threads that hold us together are are being broken...by ourselves.

E. pluribus unum: one out of many. This was the vision of our country from the very beginning. What happened? This book goes into detail of the history and gives a 1998 view of the problem. Too bad we haven't taken his comments to heart over the last 20 years. Yes, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males never seemed to get the message and have a lot of work to do to become accepting of the multicultural of the current United States. We are all American's or strive to be one. Emphasis on our differences is good for a historical perspective but doesn't help us be American's today. This book is a great read! Go ahead, buy it! If you are liberal, conservative, black, Hispanic, American you could see yourself in these pages and maybe get a better perspective on E. pluribus unum: one out of many.

American society divided by racial tribes. Clarence Thomas " people have to find another common ground in this country besides race". 30 years later things haven't changed much, our society is becoming very much like Austria Hungary before World War 1. A coldrun of racial and ethnic resentment boiling just below the surface. Outside forces are also more at work today, a world economy where more and more Western workers must compete against those in Asia who will work for little adding to political instability , hence Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump. Schlesinger's book is precient, it describes American society 30 years ago and today.