BOOKS
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tions schools and churches, and the chapter on mechanization
refers almost exclusively to mechanization in connection with
the production and distribution of goods. Having taken the title
of his chapter from Sigfried Giedion, Trachtenberg seems not to
have noticed that Giedion devotes considerable attention to the
mechanization of the domestic environment. And this directs us
to the most striking omission of all, the almost total absence of
women in this book-whether as migrants west, as workers, as
managers of domestic environments, as writers, or anything else.
To present a study of the reorganization of perceptions
would seem to entail an analysis of changes in the social forms
sustaining these perceptions-both the discarded and the newly
embraced perceptions. But except for rhetorical references to
macrosocial changes, Trachtenberg does not connect social per–
ception to.social history. No social institutions-whether tradi–
tional or novel-are presented for detailed analysis.
It
is not
enough to say in defense of this method, as he does, that he is
preoccupied with figurative language because "figures of speech,
tropes, images, metaphors" are "materials of premier historical
interest." While this may be true-and while I certainly appre–
ciate the way Trachtenberg in the American studies tradition
brings literary theory to bear on historical analysis-it is insuffi–
cient for a book that takes as its subject "culture and society."
There is, as Raymond Williams showed when he followed
Cul–
ture and Society
(1958) with
The Long Revolution
(1961), seri–
ous social history to be done in this sort of analysis.
One gets little sense of the dimensions or processes of
change during this crucial quarter-century. There are no por–
traits of the older America or the new America, nor is there a nar–
rative of the process whereby America ceased being the one and
became the other. One misses, in other words, some of the things
one usually finds in a work of history-chronology and se–
quence, causation, synchronic connections illuminating both
homological relationships across the culture and instances of
differential rates and patterns of change.
The Incorporation of America
is a book laced with pene–
trating perceptions, some absolutely incandescent, but they are
seldom developed. And rarely do they depend upon specific his–
torical analysis or evidence. Thus they do not fit into nor add up
to a coherent historical interpretation. Ironically, this book of
leftish sensibility reminds me most of Daniel Boorstin's
The
