Synopses & Reviews
Review
"The book's lengthy subtitle accurately states the author's thesis: 'An inquiry into the purpose and meaning of those formal signals by which urban man once identified himself to his fellows and how the
weakening of those signals has made our lives more isolated and less civilized.' The ideal of public life for Sennett, apparently, was the 18th century; and despite his introductory quote from de Tocqueville on the decline of civic-mindedness, the point of view is more reminiscent of Rousseau than of the former. Basically Sennett takes the reader on a tour de force through architecture, public manners, morals, etc., to show the decline of community in the bourgeois world. The antisocial retreat to privacy he associates with 'narcissism,' and it has made the public place, the community, less civilized as a result. Despite a distracting sociological jargon in the writing of the book, this is a formidable thesis and deserves a close reading." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
"Sennett presses social theory and historical experience to his service in developing a provocative thesis: that the public world stage has been usurped by the private psychic scene to the detriment of both individual and society. Sennett's quest for the causes of the impoverishment of civil life in modern industrial society opens fascinating perspectives into the relationship between theater, politics, urban life, and the changing function of the family." Carl Schorske, Princeton University
Review
"One of the most stimulating and challenging books to be written in years. . . . A major attempt . . . to re-examine the assumptions and objectives of the 1960s and transcend them without compromising their ideals. One admires the breadth of Professor Sennett's erudition, the reach of his historical imagination. . . . By all means buy this book and read it." Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Review
"[...] Sennett is at once a historian, sociologist, student of psychoanalytic doctrine . . . and celebrant of city life. . . . Seldom have I read a serious work of social theory that explains as much contemporary experience as Sennett's does." New York Times
Synopsis
"A fascinating evocation of changing styles of personal and public expression. . . ."--Robert Lekachman,
About the Author
Richard Sennett teaches sociology at the London School of Economics and New York University