Moving American

Why are these phrases peculiarly characteris tic of Americans? How have we come to be the nation of the covered wagon, the moving van, the mobile home, and how has this affected the entire fabric of American society?

In this profound and stimulating study, G. W. Pierson argues that moving indeed has a neglected and deep significance for Ameri cans. Beginning as explorers, empire builders, pilgrims, and refugees, we have been moving ever since-not only toward the Western fron tier but townward and cityward, too, and from farm to farm, from state to state, from "home" to "home." Mr. Pierson shows how these rest less habits have affected our language, our laws, our economy, our landscape, our homes, our life styles, our entire society. The fact that we define success in terms of motion, and fail ure in its opposite, is just one of the startling ways in which our propensity for movement has permeated the very core our psyches.

Looking at the frequency with which we change addresses and at our impulse to go away and abroad, which has become "an in dispensable component in the gear train of our expectations: an identifiable element in the pattern of the American dream," Mr. Pier son demonstrates that for Americans one of the greatest and most consequential freedoms is the Fifth Freedom: our freedom to move. He formulates a series of probabilities or "Laws" for spatial migration-the push, pull, and roadbed factors, among others-and ap plies them to the case history of Americans. He surveys the long-range social and psychological consequences of our "restless temper" and suggests that, whether for good or ill, much of our social life, many of our materialistic attitudes, and not a few of our anxieties and personal insecurities can be understood better if they are seen in light of the fact that most Americans live and work among a quasi anonymous and constantly shifting population.
The Moving American gives us a new key for understanding the mysteries and contra dictions in the American character and makes it clear that "our history, to a degree, has been that of Americanization by motion."
G. W. PIERSON is Learned Professor of History at Yale University, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1926, historian to the University, sometime chairman of its distinguished history department, and more recently director of its division of the humanities. As a scholar Mr. Pierson has long been interested in the American character. His studies range from Alexis de Tocqueville to the modern university, and from the frontier interpretation of American history to a pioneer course on the four-hundred-year Tran sit of culture across the Atlantic and the more recent impact of the American way of life around the world.