Chapter-by-Chapter Synopsis I. Book of Habits (recalls decades of the Fifties and Sixties, describing America as the post-war generation found it) Chapter 1. Modus Vivendi --This enduring democratic experiment emerged through a mixture of brilliant intellectual argument and violent rebellion in the eighteenth century. The opening chapter looks at the spirit in America, a design for living and horizons of the possible. Chapter 2. Popular Alienation -- Numbers change life. This chapter tells of parts of life that needed to be taken seriously, including formulae for modern life, and material gratification — delayed since the end of the Twenties. Chapter 3. Inheriting Nostalgia -- Nostalgia in America may be artificial but it's harmless enough, so long as we don't get disoriented at having missed all the laughs in the Depression. This chapter unpacks our suitcase full of remembrance, a longing for the literary Thirties and imparting of the American consensual point of view. Chapter 4. Bebop, Doo-wop -- Popular music became central. This chapter contemplates the essence of hipness through beatniks, suburban mentality, and our new self-commentary. Chapter 5. Dreams of Disaster -- Fantastic utopias, parallel universes and even the ecstasy of discovery all receded under the anodizing aftermath of the bomb. If equanimity could not be retrieved, it would be constructed through our popular 20th century misunderstanding of science, and the situation comedy. II. Book of Heresies (recollects the decades of the Sixties and Seventies, transformations and personal power) Chapter 6. Letter to Abigail -- How sublime to realize our potential in attuning our energies to something beyond what we can imagine. This chapter begins the decade in which we wondered how best to spend the time we have, including life as preparing the world for the next generation, and, what is the human occupation from which we restore ourselves in leisure? Chapter 7. Ordinary Alchemy -- The modern American family had become the smallest and most barren that ever existed. It had many ghosts hovering about it. This chapter stares into the magic of social progress, science and technology, and recalls the search for secret knowledge. Chapter 8. Double Souls --The Black American’s legacy is a struggle of two souls and the Third World. This chapter penetrates the elements of both these conflicts by how racism makes war possible, the recurring ideas of white people, and DuBois’ ‘inheritance,’ Douglass’ ‘identity,’ Malcolm’s ‘global consciousness.’ Chapter 9. Waiting for Change -- Self-reliance is deeply burrowed into the American mind. This chapter considers the American preoccupation with work and its absence, including self-reliance and what education misses, and making then remaking the self. Chapter 10. Hymn to Hypatia -- We define ourselves and our communities through gender but don't understand it all that well. This chapter retells Hypatia’s life as the story of all smart modern women, and it includes our discouraging, neglecting and destroying smart women out of mutual confusion. III. Book of Voyages (recounts decades of the Seventies and Eighties that sent many American fledglings abroad, open to the world and getting lost in corners of it) Chapter 11. Kansas Valkyrie -- To find America, we had to leave it and learn what others have to say about it. This chapter registers expatriate notions, recalling that knowledge lies ever eastward — the direction of exotic experience, and the odyssey that completes us in Homer, Plato, and L. Frank Baum’s version in Art Deco. Chapter 12. Tempo di Valse -- For many Americans, turn-of-the-century Vienna described the ‘modern’ city. This chapter is a coda made up of American experiences in the heart of Europe — Roman, Greek, Slav, the modern city in a recapitulation of styles, and to seeing the implausible in broad daylight. Chapter 13. Café Vandal -- In the dim light of the small cafés of Old Europe, it is often hard to see the American expatriate jazz players, even when they are the featured attraction. Europeans happily lose years in the café, contemplating their own bravado, the dangers of being both bold and weak, awaiting the vandals’ return, and the idea of jazz. Chapter 14. Doctrine’s Orders -- Empire runs its course — reordering doctrine eventually goes the way of empire. This chapter views of the American panorama and some unfamiliar articles of international doctrine with the passing of empire in the twentieth century, and why villages need myth to exist. Chapter 15. Supreme Futures -- We long for the incandescent spirit that reaches through the high vacuum and to place us gently on Plato’s metaphorical soaring dove. This chapter looks at our intellectual breeding grounds and ideas of social engineering, public works projects and monuments to some vision of the future. IV. Book of Visions (relives decades of the Eighties and Nineties, and its millennial lesson of letting in the mystery) Chapter 16. National Endowments -- Architecture creates horizons it then breaks through, building a bridge to what comes next. Chapter 17. Video Incest -- The final open secret is that television is American; everything on television is, in some way American or carries its objects through an American prism. This chapter sets the vertical hold on the latter century’s telecast, viewing as a cool place of the imagination, television for the ‘public’, and its virtual pleasure. Chapter 18. Twisted Fate -- We have visionaries reassuring us that we all know things that cannot be taught. This chapter looks at the fate of native peoples in America and the slim chances the rest of us have for European-style redemption, including how we try to comprehend all in a single lifetime, universal vision and modern ethics. Chapter 19. Bert Lonestone, Left Field -- In it’s absolute design, baseball demonstrates the indisputable truth of Einstein’s insight, that the center of the universe is relative. This chapter strikes at the heart of the matter for both physicist and ballplayer, and includes ‘baseball field theory,’ it’s not the matter, it’s the field. Chapter 20. Mei Kuo -- The American twinkling of this or any century is liberty. This chapter concludes the last of the four Books and reminds us of the sum of the American perspective, including lthe Chinese and the geography of the mind, and liberty to bear the joyful flow of undirected thought.