Families, Communities and American History

The Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume IX, Number I, Spring, l97t Families, Communities and American History David J. Russo. Families and Communities, A New View of American Historv. Nashville: The American Association for State and Local History, 1974. 322 + x pp. Keith Cassidy J One of the most striking developments in American historiography inrecent { years has been the enormous growth of interest in social history andthe corresponding relative decline in attention paid to political topics. Whilethe causes and full consequences of this shift are beyond the scope of this essay. it is clear that one of its results will ultimately be a substantial revisionin general surveys of American history. The book under review, while notate\t itself, is a sustained argument for the need to produce radically new general accounts of American life, and an outline of what such accounts shouldlook 1 like. It deserves careful attention, not merely because the particular approach 1 offered by the author has some plausibility, but even more because it raisei the general question of how recent research should affect the writingof American history. Russo's thesis is disarmingly simple. He notes Page Smith's observation· that the small town was "the basic form of social organization experienced 1 by the vast majority of Americans up to the early decades of the twentieth century" (p. I) and goes on to argue that if this was the case, then the focus o: historians' attention should be upon the town during this period, ratherthar upon the nation. He further contends that in iwriting American histor). primary attention should be paid to the level of community predominant during a period, but that in any period it should be recognized that Americani I lived simultaneously in several levels of community. Thus not only theto~n 1 . and the nation, but also the city, the state and the region would havetoO: Families, Communities and American History 91 considered. Russo's major complaint against current histories of the U.S. is thatthey are written from a national perspective, even though for most of American history it was not the nation but lower levels of community which dominatedthe lives of the populatio'n. He calls upon us to invert this approach,to begin with a local view and gradually to shift perspective to higher levels of community as the importance of these levels grows. "Therefore , though future general accounts of American history should be chronological in format, the prospect that our past will be viewed through the shifting perspectives of different levels of family and community life means thatthe unilinear, continuous sequence of earlier 'national' accounts ... will have to give way to a repetitive probing of a.given period, seen first from the vantage point of the family, then of the town, the city, the state, the region, andfinallythe nation" (p.260). Toput flesh on these rather bare bones, and to prove that the resources necessary for such a rewriting of American history exist, Russo spends most , ofthe book discussing the literature concerned with these levels of com- . munity. Thus, Chapter Two examines writings about the town, Chapter Three those about cities, states and regions, and Chapter Four deals with American , nationalism and the nationalization of American life. The author has clearly : done h-ishomework: all of the expected authors are there-Zuckerman and Lockridge, Warner and Frisch, Nagel and Kohn, etc.-and are covered well. The book is a quite useful historiographical guide, with excellent summaries, mtelligent criticisms and a good sense of the structure and nuances of debate among American historians. While any professional historian in the field will be acquaintedwith most of the works discussed, there are few who will not in some measure profit from Russo's often shrewd observations and comparisons . The same diligent and informed approach to the relevant literature is found in his discussion in Chapter Five of the effect upon other levels of community of the triumph of the nation in the twentieth century, and his Iaccount in the following chapter of historians' treatment of the American 1 character and the American family. His review of the literature concludes 1 with a discussion (not particularly well integrated into the rest of the...