Civilization in the United States
The 1922 original this volume answers, essay for essay, with the anger cooled.
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America Now
Sixteen years later, Stearns reruns the great inquiry — thirty-six Americans, and a country he no longer wants to flee.
- 1938
About Harold Stearns
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe sequel and the recantation in one: home and recovered, Stearns reassembled the symposium machine of Civilization in the United States for 1938 — thirty-six contributors, one facet of American life apiece — and found the country, or himself, considerably easier to live with. Read against the 1922 volume it answers, it is the document of a generation's round trip: the fury that launched the exodus, and the accommodation that followed the return. (Nonfiction; the argument is the drama.)
The story, in more detail
Six years home, sober, and back in print, Stearns did the audacious thing: he reran the experiment on himself. America Now (Scribner, 1938) reassembled the symposium machine of Civilization in the United States — one facet of national life per specialist essay — with thirty-six contributors this time, surveying a country deep in the Depression and a world sliding toward war.
The temperature drop is the real subject. The 1922 volume had been a prosecution; the 1938 one reads more like a stocktaking, and its editor — who had sailed away on the first book's verdict and been broken by the adventure — now found American life, or himself, considerably easier to live with. Reviewers noticed the recantation folded inside the method: same form, same editor, opposite weather.
Together the two symposia bracket the entire expatriate experiment: the argument for leaving and the terms of the return, with The Street I Know as the human middle volume. Stearns died five years later; this was his closing statement, and the quietness of it — after all that fury — is the point.
What's inside
The 1922 experiment, rerun sixteen years later on the far side of a Depression: thirty-six essays, each surveying one province of American life at the end of the thirties — government, industry, labor, the press, the arts, education, religion, medicine — commissioned and framed by the same editor whose first symposium had pronounced the civilization hollow. The contributors are new, the method identical, and the change in temperature is the book's real finding.
Where Civilization prosecuted, America Now takes stock: the country is in trouble and knows it, but the wholesale verdict of 1922 — that American life starved everything worth living for — no longer holds, least of all for the editor, home from the expatriate experiment and visibly reconciled. Read the two symposia as bookends and the arc completes itself: the argument for leaving, and, sixteen years and one hard education later, the terms of staying.
Themes and analysis
The inquiry assembled again
The symposium's many contributors do not make its judgments automatically disinterested. The New Yorker's contemporary review praised several essays but questioned an advertising executive's selection to assess advertising. Its objection exposes a tension in the method: professional knowledge can offer insight while giving an industry space to defend itself. Readers must therefore compare not only the subjects discussed but each contributor's position. Evaluating the country also requires asking who has been chosen to speak for it.
Stocktaking instead of prosecution
Assessment begins to change when institutions are treated as part of their surroundings. Discussing H. Paul Douglass's contribution on Protestant religion, Loyde H. Hartley recalls its argument that urbanization and the industrial city transformed churches internally. The city is therefore more than a backdrop against which belief is practiced: it helps shape the institution itself. Read through Hartley's account, this contribution complicates a simple division between American material life and spiritual life. Taking stock requires attention to their connections. A church cannot be understood only by what it professes, apart from the changing social world in which it operates.
Why we recommend it
The recantation in symposium form
Stearns doesn't announce he was wrong — he reruns the experiment and lets the cooler results say it. As intellectual theater, the restraint is the drama.
A generation's round trip, documented
With the 1922 volume it brackets the whole expatriate adventure: the argument for leaving, and — Depression, sobriety, and a world war coming — the terms of the return.
A collection of different perspectives
The thirty-six contributors let readers compare several accounts of American life instead of relying on the editor’s judgment alone.
What this book explores
Timeline
1922
Stearns's symposium Civilization in the United States pronounces the national culture hollow, and its editor sails for Paris.
1938
Home and recovered, he reruns the experiment: Scribner publishes America Now, thirty-six contributors surveying one facet of the country apiece at the end of the thirties.
1943
Stearns dies, five years after this closing statement.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Charles Scribner's Sons
- 1938
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Street I Know
What happened to the editor between the two inquiries — the memoir is the missing middle volume.
Read our takeAmerica Now: frequently asked questions
Who edited America Now?
Harold Stearns. Scribner published it in 1938, sixteen years after his 1922 symposium Civilization in the United States.
What is America Now?
A rerun of the earlier inquiry: thirty-six contributors, each surveying one facet of American life at the end of the thirties, framed by the same editor whose first symposium had pronounced the civilization hollow.
How does it differ from the 1922 volume?
The temperature drop is the subject. Where Civilization prosecuted, America Now takes stock, and its editor — home from the expatriate experiment — found American life considerably easier to live with.
Why read the two symposia together?
They bracket the whole expatriate experiment: the argument for leaving in 1922, and, sixteen years later, the terms of the return.
Was it Stearns's last book?
Effectively his closing statement. Stearns died five years later, in 1943.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document America Now, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1America Now — Briefly Noted
PeriodicalThe New Yorker, October 29, 1938 issue, 1938Used forContemporary review informing the added analysis.
2Recent Directions in Urban Church Literature
EssaysWord & World 14.4, Luther Seminary, 1994Used forLater scholarly account of Douglass's contribution, pp. 433–434. The addition explicitly attributes this mediation; the complete 1938 essay was not newly collated.
3America Now — WorldCat Edition Record
Official recordWorldCat, 1938Used forUsed to verify America Now's bibliographic context and its place within Harold Stearns's published work.
4Harold Stearns Papers, 1937–1981
ArchiveHoughton Library, Harvard UniversityUsed forUsed for independent archival, institutional, or historical context surrounding Harold Stearns and America Now.
5Lost Generation — Oxford Bibliographies in American Literature
EssaysOxford University Press, 2018Used forUsed to cross-check chronology, publication history, and the circumstances in which America Now appeared.
6Expatriates: Return of the Native
PeriodicalTime, 1943Used forUsed for an additional scholarly or biographical perspective on America Now and Harold Stearns's wider career.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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