American Soul - Softcover

Schurmann, Franz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1562790684 ISBN 13: 9781562790684

Publisher: Mercury House, 1994

A historian describes what it means to be an American, how cultural deterioration is preventing us from fulfilling a world leadership role, and why our only hope is in revitalizing a higher dimension in our lives. Original. IP.

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From Publishers Weekly:

"My own traveling was, I suppose, postlinear and post-nonlinear. I wasn't sure where I was going, or even why. Yet beyond my subjective meandering, objectively speaking I was part of a vast process through which America was bringing about a single linearly connected world." Equally "postlinear" or "post-nonlinear," Schurmann's book is awash with redundancies, pointless asides, vague terms and ill-argued points. In the end, Schurmann, a sinologist who with Orville Schell founded the Pacific News Service, seems to be saying nothing more than this: The American Dream of individual liberation, consumerism and democracy was shown by the revolutionary '60s to be fundamentally shaky; and while the state could support the outward manifestations of that Dream, the communal underpinnings or "society" were faltering for lack of direction. That direction must be provided by soul, i.e., religion. The theme itself is harmless, if not particularly interesting, but Schurmann's tortuous style pushes the book to the absurd flights: "a Jew and an Arab meet in the middle of the field to begin a process that can lead to bloodshed or to healing. But whatever happens, justice will finally emerge because it will have happened just as Hollyood would have portrayed it-in a field with a setting sun, the two sides ranged against each other, and two great samurai striding out into the field. Even when the film is terrible, one senses God in the heavens ready to let the spirit of justice flow down while blood is spilled and many weep over their fallen sons and fathers."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Many Americans take it as evidence of the superiority of our culture that people around the world are now adopting American entertainments, fashions, technologies, economics, and political ideals. Schurmann is not one of them. He well understands how the American Dream has shaped our own prosperous country and why it now captures the imagination of elites and masses around the planet. But almost everywhere he looks in America--among business executives too obsessed with making money to care about their communities, among young couples too self-absorbed to allow their sexual passions to produce children, among radical leftists too consumed by ideological resentments to appreciate the glories of American civilization--Schurmann sees symptoms of a profound spiritual malaise. America has lost its soul, and the secular gospel of American liberalism (democracy, personal liberation, and consumerism) cannot restore it. Nor, when embodied in the icons of suburban conformity, does the American Dream offer protection against the global threats posed by resurgent nationalism, AIDS, and environmental degradation. Schurmann looks to America and other nations of the rich and powerful North to provide material aid and technical assistance to the impoverished people of the South. But it is to the tight-knit communities of the South that he looks for the renewal of a spiritual vision that neither wealth nor technology can produce. A profound and sobering statement, this book deserves widespread attention. Bryce Christensen

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