Book Review "whatever Happened to the Real America?"

Chapter 1 (What Happened to the Real America? An Introduction), In this chapter Dr. Gosine uses the interaction theory. He tells you why he is writing his book and what it is going to be about. He states "My primary concern in it is to compare traditional America with modern America and ascertain what went wrong, if anything, especially in the recent past." A lot of social thinkers along with Dr. Gosine agree that "America has changed and not necessarily for the better."

American standards of life and its beliefs in the words that all men are created equal and that it is still a land of opportunity may still have some holdings in American society but it is not totally accurate. With laws limiting the freedoms Americans have we as a people are not truly free. Also the line all men are created equal is not all that true either since the rich seem to have more rights than the poor and also get taxed less. This causes the poor to stay poor and struggling. The author wrote "While it is possible that there was once something called the "American Dream," yet the reaching towards that "Dream" is beginning to become more and more of a remote possibility with each passing day" this so called Dream is "profoundly confined to a privileged few." It is for this reason that more and more problems are coming about in American society.

Instead of moving up in society today most families are realizing that they are starting to fall backwards on the "class latter." This is also true in other countries such as Cuba where Fidel Castro took control in 1959 with his military might and created "a period of perennial degeneracy for the Cuban people." Now we all know that the kinds of political problems we face here in the United States is no ware near that of second and third world countries but "we tend to have some problems of our own which are beginning to rip apart the very fabric of this nation."

Some of the things that are tearing this nation apart are crime which is our number one problem, Racism and bigotry, our education system which is severely below what our standards used to be, and also the American economy which is almost in a state of destruction. We here in the United States also stopped emphasizing the family which has lead to a rising divorce rate, juvenile delinquency, and other more disturbing problems like child abuse and the most horrifying child pornography along with an absorbent amount of other problems which plague this great society. We as a nation have been able to bounce back from adversity before but "unles we take hold of ourselves by the bootstraps and bring ourselves to the task of addressing these problems," "we run the risk of becoming a second-class nation." this might ultimately lead to the demise of America as we know it.

Chapter 2 (The Lessons of History), In this chapter the author uses conflict theory to explain how some of the worlds great societies fell and the similarities they have to American society today. The focus will be on the Greek, Roman, and European civilizations. Before we begin the author asks us two questions. "First, will the American civilization, like almost all of the other great civilizations of the past, ultimately fall by the wayside?" "Second, will the factors that brought down other great civilizations of the past serve to bring down the united states?"

We will start with the Greek contributions and there were many such as architecture, the first school of medicine, democracy, drama, and mythology along with others. Most of the contributions of this once great society revolved around science and philosophy. Although there society was well endowed in many areas of life the society still fell.

Some of the factors which contributed to the fall of Greece was "education and learning was not accorded everyone in the society," It also allowed the exploitation of the less privileged especially the slave who was regarded as less than human and "above all, Greek society failed because of its inability to resolve political conflicts." Because of these reasons the Greek city states had much animosity between each other causing them to destroy there own empire from within.

Now we will discuss the Romans who contributed things like the code of Justinian which lawyers use today, they organized the Catholic Church, and many of its sculptures can still be seen today. What lead to its down fall? Inadequate leadership is one reason, religion more notably Christianity which turned there citizens attention to the afterlife, and also through imperialism its military was simply too big for it to keep going.

The last society we will discuss is European who contributed banking and credit facilities, factory systems, specialized labor as well as the start of modern capitalism. This society fell from both internal and external factors. Dr. Gosine tells us what he means by internal and external factors. "By internal factors, I am referring to certain activities and events that were taking place in Europe at the time." "By external factors, I am referring to things beyond the geographical and ecological confines of Europe." One of the factors was the many challenges it faced from the world such as the American rise technologically, militarily and culturally. It also fell from a rise in nationalism which created conflict between European powers of the time. There was also the dwindling economic resources which made them unable to support there military arsenals.

We will be discussing the similarities or parallels the United States shares with these societies. In America today we see a decline in academic standards, a widening income gap, and racial hatred which all have similarities to the problems that brought down the Greek society. We here in America also suffer from a lack of good leadership, rising inflation, as well as an ever rising cost of living which runs almost parallel to what brought down Roman society. The United States also has to worry about "competition and the encroachments of the external world" which helped lead to the demise of the once great European society.

Chapter 3 (Money, Sex and the American Media), The author uses the conflict theory in this chapter. Money seems to play the biggest role in American society. This is closely attributed to the industrial revolution. Mahin Gosine writes "when looked at from a historical perspective, one sees that while money has always played a crucial role in American society, its presence did not become more profound than after the industrial revolution in the 1860's and especially in the first half of the twentieth century." It seems that money

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