Excellent presentation of facts. Unlike so many other texts, this one is well written. The book deserves an update!

Beyond the Melting Pot is informative and very well written, but a little dated. Of the five ethnic groups profiled - blacks, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Irish, and Italians - the last two are not so ethnic anymore, nor numerous. Also, Arabs, Asians, and South Americans are missing. (though I suppose much of what is written about Jews would sound familiar to someone with knowledge of East (and South) Asian-Americans)

However, as a history of the five ethnic groups it sets out to profile, Beyond the Melting Pot is excellent. It outlines the differing values each group had, plus the niches each group filled. Beyond the Melting pot also avoids misrepresentation by not reducing everything to economics, and admitting that certain groups/cultures really can value (and excel at)different things, something probably offensive to pc'ers.

To JSB-Chicago What you said about Italians not being ethnic you have to be playing almost every Italian I know loves being Italian and still gos to the Italian Feasts each year

Daniel Patrick Moynihan's sociological study, " Beyond The Melting Pot; The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City" provided sociologists a basis for interpreting the cultural differences in an urban society. Besides being a fascinating and amazingly well written book, it truly is a must read for anybody who wants to truly understand the racial/ethnic conflict in America today. This book rings as true in the year 2000, as it did in the 60's

This is a very thoughtful book on the development of multiculturalism and the issues that arise from it. The focus is on education, where the topic of multiculturalism is most apparent, and Glazer explains what multiculturalism is about, and what the arguments for and against it are. He is especially concerned about "civic harmony" and whether multiculturalism highlights differences between people at the expense of defending the view that America is a country that has been trying to move towards inclusion. He goes on to attack what he sees as the excesses of the multiculturalist movement in showing the absurd emphasis on topics in history that are insignificant or false.

It takes a few chapters before the book develops its central theme. At this point, it begins to discuss identity, diversity, and the possibility of cooperation and equality. Glazer's argument is that multiculturalism is essentially a black phenomenon, and that it has gained momentum because America has been unable to assimilate blacks in the way that it has done so with European immigrants, Asians, and Hispanics. The reason for this, he maintains, is that blacks have a different history than immigrants, and a reaction to prolonged inequality had to result.

Many people will disagree with Glazer's views. But fortunately for you, it is very evident where he stands, and he is candid in displaying what he believes. Regardless of whether you agree with him, this book contains a good deal of information about the history of multiculturalism that anyone interested can benefit from. Indeed, multiculturalism is here to stay, and we should all know what it's about. Here's one educated point of view that is, if not always agreeable, very temperate and reasonable.

Mr Glazer has been on the frontline for a long time, as far back as the 1960's when he wrote 'Beyond the Melting Pot' except that back then we talked about the need for 'area studies'. It seems to me that the battle seems to have taken it's toll on Mr Glazer. Here he writes with a fatalistic, almost disillusioned approach; wistful in that he "feels warmly attached to the old America" and yet resigned to the fact that 'We are all Multiculturalists Now'.

The book is not a critique of multiculturalism because he allows some of the more egregious examples of it's extremes to go without comment, reporting them as if in acceptance of their permanence. Nor is the book an endorsement; his statement that "multiculturalism in education ...has, in a word, won" is a simple remark, presented without enthusiasm or rancor, but with fatalism. This switch from optimism of earlier days to a more pessimistic outlook today, comes through in how surprised he is that "we can disagree on what seems to me to be simple truths," and in the emergence of "a hard institutionalization of differences." It's unfortunate that Mr Glazer focused on the signs and symptoms of multicultural malaise in his early chapters because it obscures his most profound point. One that although unpleasant, is a truth, and if widely accepted as a starting point, would go a long way to soften some of those hard positions and allow debate to return in place of vitriol. Glazer, on the African-American condition says "where the community of descent defines an inescapable community of fate, where knowledge and moral values are indeed grounded in blood and history...[multiculturalism]...is the price America is paying for it's inability or unwillingness to incorporate into it's society African-Americans, in the same way and to the same degree it has incorporated so many groups." A great synopsis of what Orlando Patterson calls 'the Ordeal of Integration'. If this recognition is all that multiculturalism demands at it's most basic level then we do not have to cater to it's extremes. There are in fact encouraging signs that many students of the subject are demanding mid-course corrections. I think that Mr Glazer's book is needlessly pessimistic and that there will emerge, again, a proper discourse on the subject. Sane, rational and compassionate voices such as his are still very much in need and it would be a shame if years 'in the trenches' were to take it's toll and quieten him.

I'm surprised the reader who said Riesman's book was hard to read had the basic skills even to write a review. The Lonely Crowd is not only easy to read, it's extremely easy to read. Hegel and Heidegger are hard to read. Quine's Word and Object and Carnap's Philosophy and Logical Syntax are hard to read. In terms of sociology, I guess Parsons had his moments. But Reisman? Come on. That reviewer must have had a steady diet of Harry Potter books to think that The Lonely Crowd is difficult to get through.

A classic of American sociology, Riesman's book still rings true to a great extent in its preternatural sense of the (then) coming break between the modern and post-modern era. These days Reisman's characterological framework of social personality types -- tradition oriented, inner-directed, other-directed -- seems too pat, too simplistic, too culturally bound. Nevertheless, whether one believes in it or not, the framework remains so compelling that the reader begins to group all one's friends and acquaintances in one or another of the categories. It's the power of imaginative writing that holds our attention in spite of the too neat framework, proving once again that fiction is always more compelling than sociology. Crisp and evocative metaphors work every time! Two memorable metaphors -- the inner-directed person has a "gryoscope" implanted in him by his parents and his society, while the later other-directed personality is equipped with radar to seek out social cues, are deservedly famous. So are his distinctions between the way these different cultures control their members through negative self-assesment: tradition-oriented = shame; inner-directed = guilt; other-directed = anxiety.

To his credit, Riesman bends over backwards to say that people can belong to all categories at once through various manifestations of their characters. Nevertheless, the categories are so simple, and feel so descriptively true, that the tendency to believe in the categories and Riesman's historical sketch of how each comes about almost our overwhelms skepticism. Almost. But as Todd Gitlin points out in the foreward, Riesman's theories are tied to a population theory (other-directed societies could supposedly be distinguished by their lower birth rates in combination with economic prosperity) that was almost immediately overturned by the baby boom in the years immediately following the publication of the book. Riesman himself in the reprint of his introduction from a previous edition points out the flaw in the population projection, recanting this part of his theory. And although the flaw is minor in the sense of the meat of the book -- psychologizing various populations at certain stages in their economic development, it does began after awhile to discredit even the psychologizing. For so tightly does he link the other-directed to a phenomenon which is almost immediately proved wrong, that it calls into question everything else he contends. Remember the book "The Population Bomb" which predicted in the 60s that world would soon be overrun with humanity? It didn't take into consideration famine, disease, war -- the usual plagues of humanity. There is nothing so humbling as building a theory on bad demographic predictions.

Whether or not the theories about social character are true, they were extraordinarily influential at the time, shaping ideas about the American character and American society that persist fifty years later. There are parts of this book -- most of it in fact -- that feels vital and true to this day. The question is, however, is this because the ideas contained herein have become so dissolved into the cultural discourse that they have become true in the retelling, or are they literally true for their time and so remain?

That's part of the fun of reading this old chestnut -- deciding for yourself!

This is a superb book, a masterpiece of American sociology. Riesman's eye for detail and his capacity for historical sweep are prodigious. This is not a dry book, though it is probably more academic than your average customer can stomach; but Lonely Crowd stands with the work of Dwight MacDonald, C. Wright Mills, Daniel Bell as a vade mecum to the character of our country. Don't be fooled by this other review --Riesman added to the language with his descriptors "inner" and "outer" directed; if you are raising children, fending off Disney and Time Warner, these are critical weapons in your arsenal.

I was disappointed in this book, but I think many people might still find it well worth reading. Rooney tells the story of South Bronx Churches, an Industrial Areas Foundation affiliate, which came to organize in the Bronx, with the primary purpose of building affordable, single-family homes on some of the Bronx's famous open land.

Unfortunately, Rooney doesn't critically examine anything the SBC people say to him. He presents their opinion, and their own descriptions of their strategies and their results, as fact. It would be more interesting if he were able to evaluate what the group accomplished in comparison to other groups, or in comparison to the goals they set for themselves.

But if one recognizes this fault, one can read much of the history of this significant Bronx organization in these pages.

And I have to say this -- either the author or the publisher should have used a spell-checker on this book.

I recall reding this book about 4 years ago. My recollection is that Rooney did a good job of explaining how he came to study education in the Bronx and discovered Industrial Area Foundation organizing in the South Bronx around the issues of better public education and affordable housing in particular. I thought he did a good job of gaining valuable access to the organization, its leaders and organizers. His interviews and insights were very interesting. I must admit being of a fan of this kind of Faith-based organizing myself having seen it be effective in Chicago as it has been in Rooney's description of the Bronx. Faith-based plus other institutions can democratically improve neighborhoods and revitalize citizen democracy in all types of neighborhoods from the Bronx to Westchester County.

This book, piecing together many uninteresting articles, is sort of cliche in architectural critism. They are not inspiring, not imaginative, not new, just words that have been repeated for thousands of times. Fortunately they are at least not wrong.