Culture and Democracy in the United States.(Review)

By Horace M. Kallen, with a new introduction by Stephen J. Whitfield. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1998. xix + 339 pp. $29.95.

Considering the multitude of works already reprinted in the field of immigration/ethnicity, and considering the importance of Kallen's role as pioneering theorist of cultural pluralism, it is surprising that we have waited so long for a reprint of Culture and Democracy in the United States. The relative inaccessibility of the 1924 text also makes this reprint particularly welcome. It is the first in the series, "Studies in Ethnicity," of which Ronald H. Bayor is the general editor.

The Transaction edition differs from the original in two details. The first - the omission of Kallen's subtitle, Studies in the Group Psychology of the American Peoples - is inconsequential. The second - the fact that the page numbers do not match - creates a problem because the citations to Kallen's …