Inside U.S.A., by Gunther, John
Inventory #: 00742
Price: $5.00

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Inside U.S.A., by Gunther, John. Harper & Brothers: New York, 1947. Edition: First edition stated. Hardcover, 979 pages. Black cloth with title on spine in black on a section of gold, red and black banes. Publisher's logo debossed on front cover. Maps as end papers. Fold out chart of state statistics. Bibliography, Index, List of Names of those who were interviewed or who helped in some way with the book.

Condition: Very Good, no jacket, Technically, this is an ex-library book. The title page bears a circular embossed mark of ownership stating Knox College Library, and the page opposite has a small label that states "Knox College Men's Residence Halls Library presented by Philip S. Haring Knox Faculty to Dorothy Teudesmawn". There are no other library markings. Lower spine end is bumped, cover is a little worn with a small white mark visible in the photograph, and page edges are darkened. Text pages are clean, umarked, and securely attached.

Contents: From The Atlantic Monthly

The Atlantic Monthly, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. "America," Winston Churchill said, "stands at this moment at the summit of the world." The moment was August, 1945. Nazi Germany had fallen, the atomic bomb had been dropped, imperial Japan was about to surrender, the European Allies were battered and spent, and the United States bestrode the narrow world. It was a new America, hardly known to the world--or to itself. This was the America that John Gunther portrayed in the vivid and acute reportage of Inside U.S.A., which is to be reissued this month by the New Press. This book, now half a century old, is an astonishing tour de force. It presents a shrewd, fast-moving, sparkling panorama of the United States at this historic moment of apparent triumph. . . . Inside U.S.A. does not pretend to be a profound analysis of American civilization, in the manner of Tocqueville and Bryce. But Gunther had his own quiver of penetrating questions. His objective was to identify the forces that made "this incomparable Golconda of a country" move. Wherever he went, he asked, Who runs this state or city? What are the basic and irreversible sources of power--social power, economic power, political power? He interviewed more than 900 people and emerged with more than a million words of notes. And he did it all himself, without professional researchers or stringers. . . . Inside U.S.A. is far from a panegyric. Gunther listed "the worst American characteristics--covetousness, ignorance, absence of esthetic values, get-rich-quickism, bluster, lack of vision, lack of foresight, excessive standardization, and immature and undisciplined social behavior." America was still "an enormously provincial nation," he wrote. "I do not know any country that is so ignorant about itself." Have we improved noticeably in the half century since?