The Problem of Authority in America

We seem once again to be in a time when the voice of authority is heard only falteringly if at all. The very definition of authority is fraught with difficulties. In these essays, nearly all published here for the first time, some of the foremost figures in American letters turn authority about to examine its facets - political legitimacy, literary tradition, and the psychological truths of American culture. They debate the sources of American civil society and its crises; the nature of American community and myth; the decline of patriarchal and parental authority; the role of political, literary, and psychological texts in cultural history; and the best description of the cultural prototype of our times.