The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point: America's Discontent and the Search for a New Democratic Ideal - Softcover

Slater, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807042013 ISBN 13: 9780807042014

Publisher: Beacon Press, 1990

Synopsis

In a convincing indictment of American individualism and isolationism, Philip Slater analyzes the great ills of modern society--violence, competitveness, inequality, and the national addiction to technology. Condemning the American obsession with privacy, cleanliness, and propriety, he demonstrates how the "Toilet Assumption"--the belief that undesirable realities will simply disappear if we ignore them--encourages Americans to avoid the chronic problems that threaten society.

About this title

Review:

"The Pursuit of Loneliness is still worth reading because it honors the mission of sociology not to train a caste of knowers but to contribute to society's knowledge of itself." - from the introduction by Todd Gitlin

"If I had to select a single book by which to tell a stranger what life in this country has become and why, it would be this one." - Edgar Z. Friedenberg in The New York Review of Books

"A brilliant, sweeping and revelant critique ... An insightful, well-written, and thought-provoking book that illumines each of the many aspects of American culture that it touches." - Kenneth Keniston in The New York Times

From the Back Cover:

In a convincing indictment of American individualism and isolationism, Philip Slater analyzes the great ills of modern society violence, competitiveness, inequality, and the national addiction to technology.

About this edition

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0807042013
• ISBN 13: 9780807042014
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 208