Year by year we are learning that in this restless, strenuous American life of ours vacations are essential.

We are learning, too, that the love of beauty is one of Nature's greatest healers.

Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.

Envy is the central fact of American life.

Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life.

The disruption of the anticipated American future that was simply to have unrolled out of the solid American past, out of each generation’s getting smartersmarter for knowing the inadequacies and limitations of the generations beforeout of each new generation’s breaking away from the parochialism a little further, out of the desire to go the limit in America with your rights, forming yourself as an ideal person who gets rid of the traditional Jewish habits and attitudes, who frees himself of the pre-America insecurities and the old, constraining obsessions so as to live unapologetically as an equal among equals.