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“The Figure in the Carpet”

Max Lerner Roundtable Part Three: The Middle Road and “The Figure in the Carpet”: Reading Max Lerner’s America as a Civilization

What follows, at long last, is our third and final installment of a roundtable celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of Max Lerner’s America as a Civilization. For more context and astute analysis, I’d ask that readers go back to our first two entries by Professor Sanford Lakoff, “On Revisiting America as a Civilization,” and Professor Stephen Whitfield, “An Epitaph for Ambition.”   Max Lerner’s America as a Civilization is an amazing accomplishment and a frustrating one at that. As both of our very accomplished readers of Lerner thus far, Sanford Lakoff and Stephen Whitfield have acknowledged, the book has been largely forgotten Read more