Book Review: Divided We Stand: The Crisis of a Frontier-Less Democracy

Abstract

Anybody concerned with potent political symbols in the United States will read Webb's new book with more than passive attention. This professor of American history at the University of Texas gives the anti-monopoly struggle a new twist. Most recent books set finance capital over against the rest of the community. This book sets the South and West against the monopoly power of the North. These are geographical symbols, not functional symbols. Such sectional symbols have played a disastrous role in the past of the American nation. Will Webb's attempt to revive them point toward the ultimate breakup of this nation, or, as he intends, put more punch behind the demand to democratize monopoly in the nation as it stands at present?