Lemann, Nicholas. “Paradigm Lost.” Washington Monthly 23, no. 4, (1991): 46-50.

Abstract:

[In the following essay, Lemann assesses the continuing influence of Nisbet’s Quest for Community, arguing that Nisbet powerfully captured Americans’ nostalgia for small-town life, but that this nostalgia interferes with state actions needed to protect the nation and its values.]

Every time a president of the United States proclaims himself to be in favor of returning power to states, cities, and neighborhoods, and opposed to our trying to solve national problems from Washington, he is echoing, probably unconsciously, a little book published in 1953 called The Quest…

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