Every book on this subject is bound to disappoint. It is a problem of boundaries: what are the boundaries of “cultural and intellectual history”? Does it have any? Culture as a subject is illimitable since any settled pattern of human activity is a form of culture. In just the same way, an effort of “intellect” is involved in every purposeful work of man. But, having proved that the subject cannot be defined, let us be practical about this. Oxford University Press has had to set arbitrary limits to this area of study in order to create a workable text. These can be described as follows. The focus of the book is US history and society, both colonial and national. It offers a useful assortment of entries – over seven hundred out of the many thousands of possible candidates. Around half the entries are on people, the others cover cultural movements, social institutions, theories and ideas.
The topics covered fall into two categories – firstly, topics which are central to the theme of culture and the intellect: literature, the plastic arts, music, entertainments (drama, variety – and circuses!), the humanities and religion. Much of this comes pretty close to the older concept of High Culture. But that is now seen as so stuffy, so value-laden and out of kilter with our more demotic age, that it has fallen into disuse. We then have second-order topics which touch on “culture and the intellect” in a more marginal way: science and technology, journalism, architecture, economics, political thought and sport. I do not mean to say that these activities make only a passing contribution to “culture and the intellect”. Indeed they are crucial to it, but they should be classed as “applied” culture rather than culture for its own sake. The encyclopedia also has some entries on everyday life: gambling, coffee houses, cookbooks, comic books and fashion.
The length of each article is stated in numbers of words at the outset and they vary considerably. Slavery is sizeable at 3,000 words, Print Culture (penned by the editors) is a whole essay in itself at 10,000 words, whereas Communism, despite America's long years of obsession with it, merits just a few hundred. Since the great events of 1990, this must be a sign of the times.
Let us look at the positive side first. In many reference works the modern period of American history gets the lion's share of attention but not in this one: the editors strike a good balance, the nineteenth century and the colonial years getting a big piece of the action. The articles are written in plain, comprehensible English without jargon. The biographical entries which are generally brief, offer snappy portraits of their subjects and are not encumbered with biographical detail for its own sake. But the entries do manage to encapsulate rather well the reasons why each figure enjoys an enduring reputation. The longer articles (generally between three and eight thousands words) offer useful surveys of the bigger themes: historiography, architecture, philosophy, race and ethnicity and so on.
Each article offers the reader two ways to access other relevant material: by clicking on the Related Content column in the margin and by using the see also topics at the foot of the entry. For instance, Abstract Expressionism takes you to… Art, Coltrane, John (1926-1967), Davis, Miles (1926-1991), Dean, James (1931-1955), de Kooning, Willem (1904-1997), Museums, Parker, Charlie (1920-1955), Pollock, Jackson (1912-1956), Rothko, Mark (1903-1970), Sculpture, Transcendentalism (Judging by those terminal dates, Abstract Expressionism seems to have been injurious to your health – with the single exception of de Kooning who lived to a good age). In the bigger articles such as Literature (over 12,000 words), the Related Content produces 150 cross-references. Each of the entries ends with a few books for further reading and it is here that digital technology comes into its own: the words Find This Resource, if clicked, lead you to websites where the book appears: summaries, copies for sale and what not.
Having said this, I found the online edition rather basic: instead of an index we have a search engine as one expects on a website, but there is no list of contributors with their job titles, universities and the books they may have written. I could not find a preface or introduction in which the editors' general approach to the book has been spelled out, Professors Rubin and Casper (U of Rochester, NY and U of Nevada respectively), staying firmly in the background. There are no pictures and there is no general bibliography.
I would love to sit down with the editors to learn something about their principles of selection – which must be arcane to say the least. What possible set of criteria could lead to the inclusion of Aaron Copland but not Samuel Barber, Hemingway and Faulkner but not Steinbeck, Robert Frost but not Longfellow, Allen Ginsberg or Robert Lowell. We get Pragmatism but not Progressivism, Jazz but not Blues, Armstrong and Ellington but not Basie or Whiteman. If true originals are needed – figures who made a change in the weather – give us Marlon Brando? What about divorce, feminism, muckrakers, Hollywood and civil rights: there is no trace of them. University is out but Davy Crockett and Cowboys are in. Most ironically of all for a website, there is no entry for computers, cyberspace or the internet. What a strange book!
Among the many omissions is anything to do with law and crime or social problems. The entries also steer well clear of politics – both party politics and political issues. Hot button topics like health care and welfare have been carefully avoided although they say a lot about American culture and values. The reader has to settle for an entry on Individualism. It would be perfectly feasible to compile a second encyclopedia made up of the items which Rubin and Casper miss out.
This is not a bad work but frankly I do not see the point of it. It offers the reader a grab-bag of relevant articles but it is not an “encyclopedia”. The word implies a comprehensive coverage but this work not only fails to achieve that, it barely makes the attempt. Its hyper-selectivity misses too much out. The truth is that such a large, teeming and multifarious society as the US with so many regions, languages and races and with three centuries of history behind it, cannot usefully be covered in two volumes or by a website of this size. The Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History offers lots of interesting reading but it is not one of Oxford's better products.
