Haven in a Heartless World

ISBN: 9780465028849

定价: 27.00

内容简介

)d its political
eeted bv the
center wifh a mixture of suspicion??? uneasiness??? and outrage???
Haven in a Heartless World has baffled ideologues of every po-
litical color. A book that resists assimilation to predigested posi-
tions offends those for whom politics consists of ready-made
answers and automatic loyalties. To such readers??? Haven will
continue to present itself as a difficult??? \"obscure???\" \"recondite\"
book. On the other hand??? it has proved readily accessible to
those who care more about the problem it addresses--the ero-
sion of family life in contemporary society--than about the me-
chanical exercise of squaring its approach to the subject with
received political pieties. ~???~
An Associated Press correspondent has described the book???
with more enthusiasm than understanding??? as \"a rousing defense
of traditional values???\" an \"apparent contradiction\" of the author s
\"reputation as a radical.\" Nathan Glazer finds in it the criticism
of state intervention \"one might have expected from a conserva-
tive or traditionalist??? but hardly from a representative of the rad-
ical Left.\" George Gilder??? more daring in his analysis of the
author s motives??? dismisses the \"Marxist buncombe\" that \" dis-
guises\" this \"marvelously reactionary book\"--this \" otherwise
shrewd and brilliant critique of the pretensions of modern social
science\"--as a purely rhetorical gesture designed to appease aca-
demic readers??? for whom the bitter pill of conservatism must be
coated with socialist cant.
A number of writers on the left have also found the book???
predictably??? to be reactionary in its political orientation--though
hardly \"marvelous\" in their eyes. Mark Poster pontificates: \" To
glorify the old bourgeois family is to idealize the men and
women who dominated society during the heroic age of capital-
ism.\"- Th~ta~ok is an agenda for restoring the bourgeois fam-
ily??? ~es in??? Edward Shorter. Even Wini Breines??? a radical
sociologist who should know better??? thinks Haven is flawed by
\"nostalgia\" for the patriarchal family.