Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.3 | The History Cooperative

The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life. By Michael Schudson. (New York: Free Press, 1998. x, 390 pp. $27.50, isbn 0-684-82729-8.)

Michael Schudson sees a "new model rights-regarding citizen" after three stages of development: a politics of ascent in the colonial and early national periods; a politics of parties with the rise of democracy; and a citizenship of information that was born in the Progressive Era. This simple plot is the structure for a story with great insight and nuance. The Good Citizen is deeply grounded in monographic historical work, a virtue rarer than it should be among sociologists. Schudson takes pains to show that political life did not march relentlessly toward any of his models. For instance, in some respects both Virginia and Massachusetts looked more modern in their approach to representative government early, rather than later, in their colonial histories. Schudson has a sharp eye for the bromides of political life (like the town meeting) and he is a contrarian on many sacred texts (such as Alexis de Tocqueville on voluntary associations and the Lincoln-Douglas debates). He dares to say that the televised Kennedy-Nixon debates were "a fine moment for American life." . . .

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