SYMPOSIUM ON ALAN WOLFE'S "ONE NATION, AFTER ALL"

This article presents commentaries on Alan Wolfe's book One Nation, After All, during the 1998 meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association in San Francisco, California. Wolfe has received numerous laudatory reviews in the Washington Post and in the New York Times, among other places. The work has been praised by political figures as dissimilar as Paul Wellstone, William Bennett, and Al Gore. The core message of the book has been lauded as well in radio and television interviews, of which there have been many. At a time when sociologists complain that our research is ignored or mocked by the press and by policy makers, here is a study that has been embraced. Wolfe has written a remarkable and soothing book about middle-class America. It is remarkable because it took a stunning amount of effort and organization. The transcripts alone ran to nearly four thousand pages. It is soothing because those interviewed were so morally generous. To judge by this study, there is no seething middle-class resentment, heated by the widening gap between rich and poor, likely to flame into exclusionary religious fanaticism. On the contrary, these often solidly conservative Americans were reluctant to pass judgment on other people's behavior and choices.