The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
French-born marketing consultant and psychoanalyst Rapaille takes a truism—different cultures are, well, different—and expands it by explaining how a nation's history and cultural myths are psychological templates to which its citizens respond unconsciously. Fair enough, but after that, it's all downhill. Rapaille intends his theory of culture codes to help us understand "why people do what they do," but the "fundamental archetypes" he offers are just trumped-up stereotypes. He often supports jarring pronouncements ("The Culture Code for perfection in America is DEATH") with preposterous generalizations and overstatements, e.g., Japanese men "seem utterly incapable of courtship or wooing a woman." Writing with the naïveté of someone who has learned about the world only through Hollywood films, he seems unaware that every person living within a nation's borders doesn't necessarily share the same cultural biases and references. Rapaille's successful consulting career is evidence that he's more convincing in the boardroom than he is on the page. Amid the overheated prose and dubious factoids, it's easy to overlook the book's scattered marketing proposals and employee-management tips. (June 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“This book is just plain astonishing! Filled with profound insights and ideas that have enormous consequences for today’s organizations. If you want to understand customers, Constituencies, and crowds, this book is required reading.”

--Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California and author of On Becoming a Leader

Celebrate Connections among Cultures

From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3–Colorful, inviting photographs introduce readers to connections among cultures from around the world. The book looks at celebrations among the Tibetans and Sherpas of the Himalaya, Tuareg of the Sahara, Aborigines of Australia, Sami of the Arctic Circle, Yanomami of the Amazon, Inuit of North America, and Balinese of South Asia, and includes corresponding entries from the U.S. Reynolds clearly shows that while every culture has its own traditions and reasons for celebrating, these events have much in common–people gather together, eat and drink, decorate themselves, make music, dance, and use fire. The excellent-quality photographs and the brief, engaging text come together to promote the theme: We are one human family celebrating life on Earth! A pronunciation guide, author's note, and map are appended. A welcome addition to multicultural literature.–Alexa Sandmann, Kent State University, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Gr. 3-5. Far from a generic view of "primitive" peoples, this photo-essay draws on Reynolds' experiences while she lived with a variety of families around the world. Beautiful color photos show how indigenous peoples everywhere "mark changes, express thanks, and honor important people and events," with feasts, costumes, music, and more--from the Tibetans in the Himalayas, the Tuareg in the Sahara, and the Yanomami in the Amazon rain forest to families across the U.S. With each photo, Reynolds includes a brief explanation of the source of the tradition and how it is celebrated now. It's a lot for one small book to handle, but the lively photos and the connections Reynolds makes will encourage children to go on to the titles in the appended bibliography and to the books in Reynolds' Vanishing Culture series to find out more. Hazel Rochman

A Culture of Respect

Providing useful definitions of respect in terms that are easily understood by youngsters, this picture book expresses the importance of valuing adults and classmates alike. Combining cheerful illustrations with simple language, this useful guide explains the basics of respectful behavior to young children. It emphasizes the value of a climate of mutual respect among teachers and classmates and the
immediate and long-term benefits to students who practice these behaviors—from special privileges within the classroom, to achieving future sucess in life. Focusing on the specific needs of African American school children, this helpful resource is a perfect tool for teachers who wish to foster a sense of courtesy, allowing for a calmer, more focused classroom.


About the Author
Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu is an educational consultant and the author of more than 20 books, including Black Students. Middle Class Teachers.; Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys; Keeping Black Boys Out of Special Education; and Motivating and Preparing Black Youth for Success. He lives in Chicago.

Leading in a Culture of Change

Review
"At the very time the need for effective leadership is reaching critical proportions, Michael Fullan's Leading in a Culture of Change provides powerful insights for moving forward. We look forward to sharing it with our grantees."
—Tom Vander Ark, executive director, Education, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

"Fullan articulates clearly the core values and practices of leadership required at all levels of the organization. Using specific examples, he convinces us that the key change principles are equally critical for leadership in business and education organizations."
—John Evans, chairman, Torstar Corporation

"In Leading in a Culture of Change, Michael Fullan deftly combines his expertise in school reform with the latest insights in organizational change and leadership. The result is a compelling and insightful exposition on how leaders in any setting can bring about lasting, positive, systemic change in their organizations."
—John Alexander, president, Center for Creative Leadership

"Michael Fullan's work is remarkable. He masterfully captures how leaders can significantly improve their learning and performance, even in the uncontrollable, chaotic circumstances in which they practice. A tour de force."
—Anthony Alvarado, chancellor of instruction, San Diego City Schools

"Too often schools and businesses are seen as separate and foreign places. Michael Fullan blends the best of knowledge from each into an exemplary template for improving leadership in both."
—Terrence E. Deal, coauthor of Leading with Soul

"The sign of outstanding and inspired leadership is the ability to lead rather than be led by the forces of change. How do leaders in private, public, and not-for-profit sectors meet the challenges of today's complex world? This book shows the way."
—Veronica Lacey, president and CEO, The Learning Partnership

"Michael Fullan debunks the notion that there is a 'one-size-fits-all' blueprint for managing change. Leading in a Culture of Change is an excellent book for all educators and business leaders. Readers will gain powerful new insights into developing the core capabilities required for effective leadership under conditions of complex change."
—Kenneth Lalonde, executive vice president, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

"A great book for leaders everywhere who are truly interested in learning and cultivating the leadership potential in others."
—Marilyn Knox, president, Nutrition, Nestle Canada Inc.

"Michael Fullan has no truck with simplistic solutions or superheroes. Instead he helps leaders understand the paradoxes of complex cultural change-leaders from all sectors will learn from his insights."
—Heather Duquesnay, director and chief executive, National College for School Leadership, England

"Leading in a Culture of Change describes vividly the kind of leadership necessary to bring about successful change in modern times. At its heart is building capacity-a powerful message."
—Michael Barber, head, Standards and Effectiveness Unit, Department for Education and Employment, London, England --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages

Using data from cultures and languages throughout the world to highlight both similarities and differences in human languages—this text explores the many interconnections among language, culture, and communicative meaning. It examines the multi-faceted meanings and uses of language and emphasizes the ways that language encapsulates speakers' meanings and intentions.

Nancy Bonvillain is one of the top anthropological linguists in America. This is one of the best text books on the subject that's ever been written. It includes clear explanations and excellent cross-cultural examples. It follows the major traditions set by American linguists and anthropologists in the study of language description, language structure, language acquisition, language change, and the ways in which language reflects differences in cultural values, beliefs, and practices cross-culturally. It's a handy book to use in the undergraduate linguistic anthropology course and students enjoy it.

Language: Readings in Language and Culture

This collection of essays touches on all the major points of Linguistics (very briefly) and is a great introduction to the field. The different authors all have a slightly different style, but it is not jarring and does not interfere with the ability to pull information out of the text. I have read other intro to linguistics books and none have been as interesting or informative as this one. I highly recommend this book to anyone who plans to take a college 'english language' or linguistics class, and to anyone interested in linguistice but deosn't know where to start.

Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning

This book identifies the many facets of culture that influence second language learners and teachers. The paperback edition identifies the many facets of culture that influence second language learners and teachers. It addresses the impact of culture on learning to interact, speak, construct meaning, and write in a second language, while staying within the sociocultural paradigms specific to a particular language and its speakers. By providing a comprehensive introduction to research from other disciplines on the interaction between language and culture, this volume offers an important contribution to the field of second language acquisition.

Context and Culture in Language Teaching (Oxford Applied Linguistics)

This superb book, much cited in recent articles and studies, popularized the notion that culture is not something "out there", as conceived and taught in many language classrooms, but something created in interaction between people separated culturally, historically and socially. As Brian Street remarked about 6 years ago, "culture is a verb". This book has been instrumental in changing notions of what culture is and how it can be explored in all its rich manifestations--whether in the classroom or out.

The depth and sophistication of the book, far from being inhibitory, invites constant re-readings and new insights: 6 years of reading and re-reading has not exhausted the possibilities. Kramsch's remarkable blend of incisive yet delicately nuanced phrasing, yields a startling clarity of thought and style rare in academic discourse these days. The temptation to plagiarize is hard to resist. It is a pleasure to read this book, and if the term "food for thought" were ever well applied, it would be to this book.

Because of its inter-disciplinary approach and ground-breaking nature, this book should be read by anyone in fields remotely connected to language and culture--not just teachers mainly concerned with applying insights to the classroom. Language teaching is often dumbed-down and reduced to a matter of simply applying the currently-accepted methodology; Kramsch has revealed that language teaching can be (and should be) an intellectual endeavour. She has done nothing less than to revolutionize the nature of the field. We have everything to thank her for it.

Language, Culture, and Teaching: Critical Perspectives for a New Century (Volume in the Language, Culture, and Teaching Series

Bringing over 30 years to the topic of bilingual education, Nieto meticulously takes langauge and language learning apart by revealing it as a organ for cultural expression. To expand a child's literacy, to teach them the cummunicative value of language,--especially in a bilignual way--, a teacher and a school must develop an accepting, affirming philosophy. They must listen to students and bolster their solidarity as a cultural of students and as cultures of students by abandoning the traditional ESL or TESOL models. Teachers must strive to understand the linguistic concepts of second langauge acquisition in order to best instill literacy in their students.

All of those concepts require frequent revisits of this book. It reads quite well, but stay frosty. If you skim too much, you will miss a valuable nugget of information. I suggested reading the book in whatever order that you wish the second time because you will fine that each chapter can stand alone once you understand her primary thesis. Also, read it in small pieces while you teach your children about literacy (especially early childhood teachers). Then you will know how to apply it with much more fluidity within your teaching philosophy.

Language, Culture, and Society: A Book of Readings

Twenty-four articles representing a diversity of interests and approaches have been brought together in this collection intended to define and develop topics of central interest to language, culture, and society. Opening pieces include enduring, classic writings by Boas, Sapir, Whorf, Mead, and others, giving the volume an important historical orientation. These contributions form the groundwork for the wide sampling of more recent and contemporary works that follows. The selections chosen for Language, Culture, and Society, Second Edition, reflect several major themes within the field: language in relation to thought and cognition; language in relation to the cultural partitioning of the environment; language in relation to self-as-social; language in relation to social differentiation; and language in relation to its emergence as a sociocultural phenomenon.

The editor's helpful introductions point out significant ideas and trace the development of the twenty-four contributions that form a diverse, well-balanced, and up-to-date volume.

Race, Language, and Culture

This volume is a collection of the most important essays written by Franz Boas on the science of anthropology.

"Franz Boas is the father of American anthropology and one of the founders of the field of modern anthropology. The book, Race, Language, and Culture, is a collection of some of his most important essays."—David Schneider, University of Chicago

"An exceptional book. Exceptional because it brings into one volume sixty-two papers written by the most influential figure in American anthropology. . . . Exceptional in that it exhibits the wide range of interests and scientific exactness which made it possible for one man to exert such a profound influence on the growing science of anthropology. . . . This is a volume every student of anthropology will wish to possess; it will also have a wide distribution among other students of the social sciences, and all interested in the problems of race."—Fay-Cooper Cole, American Anthropologist

The Interpretation Of Cultures (Basic Books Classics)

Description
In The Interpretation of Cultures, the most original anthropologist of his generation moved far beyond the traditional confines of his discipline to develop an important new concept of culture. This groundbreaking book, winner of the 1974 Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association, helped define for an entire generation of anthropologists what their field is ultimately about.

Review: By Miguel B. Llora

The Interpretation of Culture by Clifford Geertz is concerned with articulating a particular view of what culture is, what role it plays in social life, and proposes a methodology with which it should be studied. Geertz posits that culture should not be seen as a science in search of law but instead as an interpretation in search of meaning. "The concept of culture I espouse, and whose utility the essays below attempt to demonstrate, is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after, construing social expression on their surface enigmatical. But this pronouncement, a doctrine in a clause demands itself some explication" (p5)

In part 1, Geertz begins with "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture". This, the first essay in the series explains the complexity of culture and what it is. Geertz explains his semiotics when he writes: "To look at the symbolic dimensions of social action - art, religion, ideology, science, law, morality, common sense - is not to turn away from the existential dilemmas of life for some empyrean realm of deemotionalized forms: it is to plunge into the midst of them. The essential vocations, but to make available to us answers that others, guarding other sheep in other valleys, have given, and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man has said." (p30) In part 2, Geertz explores different dimensions of culture. Culture is a "template" or "program". As individuals, we learn it then modify it. Geertz fails to explain how these templates come to be and be modified but posits that they become "common sense" of Platonic propositions and continue to be so. "In attempting to launch such an integration from the anthropological side and to reach, thereby, a more exact image of man, I want to propose two ideas. The first of these is that culture is best seen not as complexes of concrete behavior patterns - customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters - as has, by and large, been the case up to now, but as a set of control mechanisms - plans, recipes, rules, instructions (what computer engineers call "programs") - for the governing of behavior. The second idea is that man is precisely the animal most desperately dependent upon such extragenetic, outside-the-skin control mechanisms, such as cultural programs, for ordering his behavior." (p44) Part 3 centers on religion. Part 4 is the "thickest" sets of essays including "Ideology As a Cultural System" and "The Politics of Meaning". In chapter 8, Geertz identifies what he sees as the phenomenon of ideology and how ideology is vilified as a space for something that is epistemologically "Other". "That the conception of ideology now regnant in the social sciences is a thoroughly evaluative (that is, pejorative) one is readily enough demonstrated. "[The study of ideology] deals with a mode of thinking which is thrown off its proper course,"" (p196)

The final section part 5 is where is all come together for me. The last portion is his examination of Levi-Strauss and Geertz's "breaking through the veil" in "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight." I will deal with the latter first then tackle what I see as his inability to see merit in the universals. As if transported by some form of deja vu, I "feel" Geertz when he wrote about suddenly being part of the milieu. In "The Cerebral Savage: On the work of Claude Levi-Strauss" Geertz takes apart Levi-Strauss and his humanistic/scientific project. Geertz sees this form of inquiry as bankrupt as anthropologists have "...taken refuge in bloodless universals". (p5). Geertz elaborates on this premise in his critique of Levi-Strauss and his work in "Tristes Tropique". Coming out in a generation that was starting to reflect on "how" they were writing rather than "what" they were writing about, Geertz's critique is a reflection on Levi-Strauss' lack of self reflexivity. In a move that parallels Foucault's in "The Order of Things", Geertz begins his anti-humanist attack on a less reflective mode of writing that, on the inside causes epistemic violence and on the outside is naive and self delusory. "In Levi-Strauss' work the two faces of anthropology - as a way of going at the world and as a method for uncovering lawful relations among empirical facts - are turned in toward one another so as to force a direct confrontation between them rather than (as is more common among ethnologists) out away from one another so as to avoid such a confrontation and the inward stresses which go with it. This accounts both for the power of his work and for its general appeal. It rings with boldness and a kind of reckless candor. But it also accounts for the more intraprofessional suspicion that what is presented as High Science may really be an ingenious and somewhat roundabout attempt to defend a metaphysical position, advance argument, and serve a moral cause." (p346-347). I agree with Geertz and Foucault with regards to the complexity and need to effect a "thick" description. However, much can still be learned from that scientific/humanist Man centered project. The Enlightenment and its project has been credited for the wonderfully contradictory le mission civilastrice which accord to Fanon is such a contradiction in that the ideology that places man at the center, is responsible for so much killing. If Levi-Strauss is doing the same thing theoretically, then he is complicit in this move to reinforce placing Man at the center and to submit us to its results. With Geertz and Foucault we can hopefully find a more "enlightened" middle ground.

Miguel Llora

Economies and Cultures: Foundations of Economic Anthropology

Description
More than any other anthropological subdiscipline, economic anthropology constantly questions and debates the practical motives of people as they go about their daily lives. Tracing the history of the dialog between anthropology and economics, Richard R. Wilk and Lisa C. Cliggett move economic anthropology beyond the narrow concerns of earlier debates and place the field directly at the center of current issues in the social sciences. They focus on the unique strengths of economic anthropology as a meeting place for symbolic and materialist approaches and for understanding human beings as both practical and cultural. In so doing, the authors argue for the wider relevance of economic anthropology to applied anthropology and identify other avenues for interaction with economics, sociology, and other social and behavioral sciences. The second edition of Economies and Societies contains an entirely new chapter on gifts and exchange that critically approaches the new literature in this area, as well as a thoroughly updated bibliography and guide for students for finding case studies in economic anthropology.


About the Author
Richard R. Wilk is professor of anthropology and gender studies at Indiana University. Lisa C. Cliggett is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Kentucky.

Review: By William A. Brown

Wilk begins his theoretical survey of economic anthropology with a review of the debate that spurred the birth of the field: the debate between the "substantivists" and the "formalists" during the 1950's, '60's, and early '70's. Wilk contends that, while some of the points made by both factions are valuable and deserve revisiting, each camp in effect argued past the other because of their shared mistaken belief that their respective viewpoints represented conceptually integrated, mutually exclusive wholes. The argument eventually sputtered out rather than came to a definitive conclusion, Wilk says, because this fundamental mistake fed into a series of ever-more-intractably convoluted polemics, but also because other issues (for example the emergence of applied anthropology) caused economic anthropologists to shift their interests toward other pursuits.

Wilk then divides the body of economic anthropological literature into three groups according to three major outlooks on human motivation. Unlike the case of the substantivists and the formalists, he maintains, these three are conceptually integrated and mutually exclusive: 1) humans are motivated by self-interest; 2) humans are motivated by an intrinsic sociability; or 3) humans are motivated by deeply ingrained, culturally instilled morals or values. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, Wilk also suggests that each school of thought may share some themes or dimensions in common with the others, and he discusses the work of two anthropologists who have employed all three models in hybridized or eclectic fashion.

The dominant undercurrent of Wilk's survey is a deep dissatisfaction with the fractured state of economic anthropological scholarship. The field remains fractured along these party lines, he says, because each takes certain fundamental propositions about human nature on faith rather than testing them. One consequence appears to be that each perspective seems to work out well enough only some of the time, there being copious counterexamples for each (not to mention those cases which might be just as well explained by one perspective as by another). The conflicted and fractured academy will remain so, he says, so long as each perspective's core concepts are held in such high, unimpeachable esteem.

I agree with Wilk that many of these allegedly self-evident and ergo unimpeachable presuppositions are in fact quite easily felled by well-known ethnographic data. I also agree that most or all explanation should rely on empirical testing. But I believe that Wilk goes to far in reviving the bad faith of the 19th and 20th century positivists (I find Karl Popper's expression to be the most articulate and historically informed of the positivists . . . a fact which also makes him the most articulate advocate of positivist bad faith, as pointed out by Thomas Kuhn): like the positivists, Wilk seems to insist that the epistemological veracity of every single proposition that we make about anything must lie in our ability to successfully hold it up against empirical testing, yet also like the positivists, he fails to recognize that this relentless policy of testing the hell out of every possible statement must also undercut our very ability to test because it must also bring under inspection any and every conceivable descriptive lexicon we use to formulate our empirical observations (whether linguistic or graphic).

Put differently, there can be no proposition rooted in empirical observation if there are not also propositions whose veracity has nothing to do with empirical observation; the descriptive lexicon or apparatus must remain a prerequisite of empirical observation, testing, and scientific explanation, not the subject of its inquiry. And from an epistemological standpoint, admitting that every empirical investigation begs certain conceptual associations is a far better option than being incapable of even formulating a simple descriptive proposition, or capable only of semantically unstable, eclectic corpus of statements; we must be comfortable with the fact that conceptual implications are an inescapable, incontrovertible side-effect of every descriptive apparatus, that we can derive an awful lot from even the simplest descriptive statement without ever having to qualify ourselves empirically.

The real problem of science, then, is striking a balance between maintaining a descriptive lexicon and choosing one which is immune from empirical falsification.

Unfortunately, though, Wilk acts in positivist bad faith. His "social-temporal" grid, ostensibly conceived to sidestep the dogmatic behavior of the factions he spends most of his book critiqueing, lands him in the same basic sort of activity. He also makes other dogmatic statements about human motivation while discussing the grid: "People want their acts to be ambiguous and hard to pin down; they may want to conceal their motives even from themselves." (150) But doesn't "want" fall into the same basic semantic domain as "motivation"? In the end, Wilk's descriptive apparatus turns out to be as endowed with conceptual baggage as do any of the schools he critiques, the main difference being that he is blind to his own presuppositions.

I don't mean to ride Wilk too roughly on this point. There are many excellent dimensions to the book, central among them being his contention that most of the major arguments in economic anthropology center around the issue of human motivation. Also, while the book is not a textbook in the conventional sense, it will immerse the reader in a survey of anthropological history comparable to Marvin Harris' "The Rise of Anthropology," both in terms of its breadth and its critical depth (though nowhere near as voluminous). I must also confess that I find Wilk's social-temporal grid to be more capable of doing what it is intended to do -- describe -- than any apparatus conceived by any of the other major schools of thought, exactly because it covers the broad variation of human motivations presumed not to exist by those other, more exclusive schools of thought. Yet I cannot keep with Wilk's epistemological bad faith; unlike Wilk, I am quite conscious of the presuppositional nature his descriptive grid, and as a pragmatist I am willing to accept the implications of whatever it might imply.

American Cinema/American Culture

Description
Ideal for Introduction to American Cinema courses, American Film History courses, and Introductory Film Appreciation courses focused on American Film, this text offers a cultural examination of the American movie-making industry, with particular attention paid to the economic and aesthetic institution of Hollywood.

Review : By C. Burkhalter
Years ago I took an intro-level film class at a community college. This was the text for the class. It was accompanied (at least in my class) by a PBS video series that combined film clips with interviews and historical information. Going into the class I had little more than a passing interest in film and film history. But after taking that class, my passion for film has grown exponentially with each year. But back to the book, I really liked this book and highlighted my way from the front cover to the back cover. There are of course limitations to this book. Firstly, it deals only with American films. Secondly, this book barely breaks the 300-page mark - hardly a comprehensive volume. You aren't going to get any information on John Cassavetes here or anything. Now if you have a chance to use this book in conjunction with the PBS films, I think you'll do much better (in fact I think the vids even give a nod to Cassavetes), but even then please note that this material is for an INTRO-level film class, and won't be much good for someone who already knows a fair amount about American film. But with that in mind, the book still has a lot to offer someone looking to introduce themselves to film history.

The first third of the book starts with the birth of film, moves quickly on to the Hollywood studio system, and walks us through the basics of film style (camerawork, lighting, editing, etc.). The second third covers the basics of film genre; there is a chapter about film noir, one on comedies, one on war films, and one on westerns. This second section was particularly useful to me. I could read each chapter, jot down a list of promising titles, hit my local video store, and I was good to go. The third section covers American film after World War II. In this section things seem a little compressed. 110 pages for 50 years of film? A lot is lost on the cutting room floor. But there's lots to dig into all the same. There's a chapter on Hollywood during the McCarthy years (yikes!), one on film's evolution during the emergence of television, a chapter on 1960s counterculture films, one on the film school directors of the 1970s and 1980s, and finally a pretty weak chapter on film in the 1990s. Oh yeah, and at the end of the book there's a handy glossary (in case you're ever stuck on what point-of-view editing is) and a pretty thorough index.

Again, not a book for someone who already has a good feel for film history. But definitely a great resource for someone new to film studies, or for someone who has trouble finding a movie at Blockbuster on Fridays. It did a great job getting me excited about movies, and I imagine its done the same for others.... A good companion to this text (or possibly an all-out replacement of it) is Scorsese's VHS/DVD, "A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies."

Fundamentalism and American Culture (New Edition) (Paperback)

Product Description
Many American's today are taking note of the surprisingly strong political force that is the religious right. Controversial decisions by the government are met with hundreds of lobbyists, millions of dollars of advertising spending, and a powerful grassroots response. How has the fundamentalist movement managed to resist the pressures of the scientific community and the draw of modern popular culture to hold on to their ultra-conservative Christian views? Understanding the movement's history is key to answering this question. Fundamentalism and American Culture has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.
For Marsden, fundamentalists are not just religious conservatives; they are conservatives who are willing to take a stand and to fight. In Marsden's words (borrowed by Jerry Falwell), "a fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something." In the late nineteenth century American Protestantism was gradually dividing between liberals who were accepting new scientific and higher critical views that contradicted the Bible and defenders of the more traditional evangelicalism. By the 1920s a full-fledged "fundamentalist" movement had developed in protest against theological changes in the churches and changing mores in the culture. Building on networks of evangelists, Bible conferences, Bible institutes, and missions agencies, fundamentalists coalesced into a major protest movement that proved to have remarkable staying power.
For this new edition, a major new chapter compares fundamentalism since the 1970s to the fundamentalism of the 1920s, looking particularly at the extraordinary growth in political emphasis and power of the more recent movement. Never has it been more important to understand the history of fundamentalism in our rapidly polarizing nation. Marsen's carefully researched and engrossing work remains the best way to do just that.


Review: By Jacob Aitken

The thesis of this book parallels that of George Marsden's similar book on American culture, Religion and American Culture, that Fundamentalism shaped and was shaped by the surrounding culture. Marsden builds upon the work of earlier historians of Fundamentalism, namely that of Ernest Sandeen's book The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism. Sandeen's thesis is that Fundamentalism is the outgrowth of the "millenarian" movement that developed in late nineteenth-century American, especially through Bible institutes and conferences concerning the interpretation of biblical prophecies. Sandeen's thesis, according to Marsden, has much to commend it in connecting millenarianism and Princeton theology to the movement; however, it does not deal adequately with the militant anti-modernistic slant of the movement. Fundamentalism can briefly be defined as militant anti-modernist Protestantism that took on its own identity as a patchwork coalition of representatives of other movements.
Overview of the Book
Marsden divides his book into three sections (these sections are different in intent than the above themes. Marsden uses these sections to expand on his themes), Evangelicalism before Fundamentalism, the Shaping of Fundamentalism as a Movement, and the Crucial Years in which it gained popularity and its subsequent exodus of public life. In understanding the rise of Fundamentalism at the end of the nineteenth-century one must understand the backdrop from which it arose-nineteenth-century evangelicalism.
Conclusion
Marsden concludes the book by re-emphasizing his definition of Fundamentalism as a militant anti-modernist conservative force. For Marsden this should be the starting point for defining the movement. Militant anti-modernism applies to all types of Fundamentalism and any definition that goes beyond this must have qualifiers so that false stereotypes are not applied to the wrong group. As an Evangelical I enjoyed this book as I saw where the mind-set of conservatives and liberals developed. I also learned to what extent my own beliefs were influenced by this movement. I suggest that this book be read alongside another book on the shaping of American Christianity for a full understanding. I would also like to see an analysis of Fundamentalism from a more mainline perspective, although I believe Marsden is objective in this work. My main qualm with this book is in Part Three. In discussing the peak and soon-to-come fall of Fundamentalism, Marsden tried to put too many ideas into too few words. To keep up with him I had to re-analyze several chapters. However, due to the length of the book already, I can understand his attempt to save space. I would recommend this book to people of all political and religious persuasions so that they may have a fair understanding of this branch of early twentieth-century American religion.

American Ways: An Introduction to American Culture (3rd Edition)

Book Info
Popular cultural reader focuses on the traditional mainstream values that have attracted people to the United States for well over 200 years and traces the effect of these values on American life. Paper. DLC: English language - Textbooks for foreign speakers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

American Ways: An Introduction to American Culture, Third Edition, by Maryanne Kearny Datesman, JoAnn Crandall, and Edward N. Kearny, focuses on the traditional values that have attracted people to the United States for well over 200 years and traces the effects of these values on American life.

Chapter themes include diversity, the family, education, government and politics, religion, business, and recreation. Cross-cultural activities --- from discussion topics to writing projects --- encourage high-intermediate to advanced students to compare their own values with those discussed in the readings.

New to the Third Edition:

* Expanded pre-reading exercises preview the chapter content and Academic Word List vocabulary.
* Improve Your Reading Skills helps students become independent readers.
* Build Your Vocabulary features collocations and exercises that expand on the Academic Word List.
* New Internet activities offer opportunities for further research and study.

The Twilight of American Culture

From Publishers Weekly
American culture is in crisis, argues Berman, pointing out that "millions of high school graduates can barely read or write"; "common words are misspelled on public signs"; "most Americans grow old in isolation, zoning out in front of TV screens"; and "40% of American adults [do] not know that Germany was our enemy in World War II"--never mind that most students don't even want to learn Greek or Latin. Berman's lament that "like ancient Rome [American culture] is drifting into an increasingly dysfunctional situation" at first makes his book seem like a neoconservative treatise along the lines of the late Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. But Berman, who teaches in the liberal arts masters program at Johns Hopkins University, doesn't locate the cause of this malaise in multiculturalism or postmodernism, as Bloom did (although he is no fan of either one), but rather in the increasing dominance of corporate culture and the global economy, which he claims creates a homogenous business and consumer culture that disdains art, beauty, literature, critical thinking and the principles of the Enlightenment. Berman's provocative remedy is to urge individuals who are appalled by this "McWorld" to become "sacred/secular humanist" monks who renounce commercial slogans and the "fashionable patois of postmodernism" and pursue Enlightenment values. While Berman's eclectic approach often makes for engaging reading, his quirky and almost completely theoretical solutions are unlikely to galvanize many readers. Agent, Candice Fuhrman. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Amazon.com
"If you have finally had it with CNN and Hollywood and John Grisham and New Age 'spirituality,' then pull up a chair, unplug your phone (beeper, TV, fax machine, computer, etc.), and give me a few hours of your time. I promise to do my best not to entertain you."

A slightly forbidding introduction to a book, but indicative of its author's disgust at the homogenized McWorld in which we live, and an enticing challenge to read on. As the title The Twilight of American Culture suggests, Morris Berman's outlook is somewhat bleak. Analogizing the contemporary United States to the late Roman Empire, Berman sees a nation fat on useless consumption, saturated with corporate ideology, and politically, psychically, and culturally dulled. But he believes that this behemoth--what Thomas Frank called the "multinational entertainment oligopoly"--must buckle under its own weight. His hope for a brighter tomorrow lies in a modern monastic movement, in which keepers of the enlightenment flame resist the constant barrage of "spin and hype." Ironically, despite his disdain for "the fashionable patois of postmodernism," he approvingly quotes poststructuralist theorist Jean-François Lyotard's maxim "elitism for everybody" in describing this cadre of idiosyncratic, literate devotees, these new monks.

Berman is plainspoken and occasionally caustic. The Twilight of American Culture is an informed and thought-provoking book, a wake-up call to a nation whose powerful minority has become increasingly self-satisfied as their stock options ripen, while an underclass that vastly outnumbers the e-generation withers on the vine and cannot locate itself on any map. It is a quick and savage read that aims to get your eyes off this computer, your nose out of that self-help book, and send you back to thought and action. --J.R. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.