Civilization in the United States brings together thirty American essayists to examine the foundations and shortcomings of modern American culture. The volume opens with the premise that genuine cultural criticism is impossible without clearing away the intellectual rocks of dogma and sentimentality. Across various fields, the contributors trace three major undercurrents in national life: a deep-seated dichotomy between preaching and practice, the denial of a heterogeneous heritage in favour of a spurious Anglo-Saxon conformity, and a widespread emotional and aesthetic starvation masked by material efficiency. The opening essay by Lewis Mumford investigates the material growth and cultural impoverishment of the American city, tracing its transition from the provincial New England town to the commercial and industrial center where the gridiron plan promoted land speculation over civic design.
H. L. Mencken turns a sharp eye on practical politics, arguing that the constitutional requirement of local habitation for representatives shackles Congress to petty local bosses and third-rate minds.
John Macy examines the industrialization and standardization of journalism, where the counting-room and the advertiser dictate policy and the reporter becomes an anonymous wage-earner. Zechariah Chafee, Jr. addresses the law, showing how an inherited system struggles to meet the needs of a crowded urban society while lagging behind social science. Robert Morss Lovett tackles education, comparing the modern faith in schooling to a medieval superstition and critiquing the elective system and vocational propaganda.
J. E. Spingarn explores scholarship and criticism, pointing out the absence of philosophic depth and the sterile pedantry of academic life.
Other contributors dissect science, philosophy, the literary life, art, economics, radicalism, and race relations. The volume concludes with foreign perspectives from England, Ireland, and Italy, offering an external mirror to American pretensions. Throughout the essays, the authors maintain that the first step toward a true civilization is a self-conscious and deliberately critical examination of national life.
