This is unapologetically a work of synthesis rather than original research. It relies on the findings and conclusions of hundreds of historians to frame its narrative and would doubtless alienate professional historians who expect historical investigations to derive from primary sources. Although the book could be used as the basis for a course in urban history, it is essentially an interpretative account of the formation and dissolution of the American public, rather than principally a pedagogical vehicle. Consequently, it must be evaluated on the strength of its argument, which is challenging and interesting though flawed.

John Fairfield's thesis is that the United States has a long history of civic republicanism that was overlooked by historians who regarded America as based only on a competitive individualism governed by the market. He considers that in recent decades, “two generations of historians [have recovered] a rich history of ‘collective action for the public good’” (p. ix). The book is a chronicle of the various upsurges of such collective action but also of its defeat by the forces of capital: “We have failed to preserve this legacy, much less add to it” (p. x). Essentially, this is a work about the failure of democracy in the face of opposition from technocratic elites and corporate oligarchies. Fairfield sees the democratic public as always in danger of corruption from outside rather than from within, and he considers critical views of populism as always founded in upper-class self-interest.

Fairfield focuses on tensions between private property and democratic participation within the context of the city. Although he identifies the role of racism and antiimmigrant sentiments among the masses in suppressing broad popular participation, he implies that they resulted from manipulation by capitalists, rather than being grounded in the views of ordinary people—or, at any rate, that the denial to the majority of opportunities for education through democratic participation led to the deformation of public opinion.

The first part of the book traces the ideal of citizenship as it emerged from the American Revolution, culminating in abolitionism and the freeing of the slaves during the Civil War. Fairfield comments on the Protestant antipathy to luxury that characterized the colonial period, forming part of the heritage of civic republicanism, and the opposition to Federalist elitism that arose after the framing of the Constitution: “The Antifederalists accepted the reality of interests but denied that any virtuous elite could speak for the interests of the people” (p. 25). He points to the triumph of the Antifederalists during the Jacksonian revolution as a victory for civic republicanism but notes that at the same time, women and slaves were excluded from the redefined republic. Nevertheless, he sees the germination of the eventual granting of rights to these groups in the values of egalitarianism prevalent during this period.

The author connects the rise of the free labor ideal and reform of working conditions during this period to the strengthening of political democracy. He indicates that the call for the eight-hour day was justified in that it would enable workingmen to participate in democratic deliberation and seek self-improvement. The contradictions embodied in Jacksonian ideology, however, by giving free rein to property owners, undermined these demands. The concept of the independent workingman ran into the increasing power of capital, as laissez-faire became the dominant approach to governing the economy. The ideal of economic democracy as represented by the autonomous citizen-proprietor became more and more untenable.

Fairfield's description of the first century of American democracy pits the worthy citizen-proprietor against the forces of the southern plantation mode of production, based on slave labor, and on an antigovernment ideology that limited the potential to use political means to restrict capitalist hegemony. It is a trope that runs throughout the book—the admirable commoner aspiring to realize democratic aims constantly being overwhelmed by monied interests or elite contempt. He later alludes to Walter Lippman's devastating critiques of mass publics as representative of the failure of intellectuals to recognize the capacity of the working class for intelligent participation. His reaction, however, is intuitive rather than argued out. His is a picture of an Edenic America being corrupted by the snake of upper-class values and money. Without gainsaying his portrayal of periodic demands for greater democracy, can we simply accept that participation and deliberation, if they had not been stifled, would have made American public opinion more tolerant and less self-interested?

Subsequent chapters depict the collapse of democratic participation after Reconstruction. The discrediting of the participatory model after the draft riots of the Civil War, the corruption of machine politics, Progressive reform, the construction of high culture, and the destruction of the Freedmen's bureau all contributed to the downfall of civic republicanism. Fairfield contends that the elimination of partisanship in municipal elections, a significant aim of the reformers, caused politics to become uninteresting, promoting the withdrawal of less well-educated citizens and causing political and popular culture to separate. He presents the arguments of such theorists as Gustav LeBon regarding mob rule as self-evidently wrong, but he does so without developing a strong counterargument. Except for passing mention, the Ku Klux Klan and Christian fundamentalism are ignored, and anti-Semitism mentioned not at all except in reference to the influence of Father Coughlin's radio broadcasts.

Settlement houses, politically oriented films, social centers, and public libraries constituted efforts around the turn of the twentieth century to raise the aspirational and educational levels of the public. Their contribution to the furthering of democracy, however, is swept away by war propaganda and the post–World War I Red Scare. Fairfield mentions how the successful use of propaganda caused John Dewey to become disillusioned with the ability of the public to resist its influence. Tellingly, he recounts Lippman's “growing criticism of the ‘cult of democracy,’ the tendency ‘to assume that the people have all the virtues and then pretend, when they don't exhibit them, that it is somebody else's fault’” (p. 172). This assumption seems to pervade Fairfield's thesis as well, and he does not question it.

The final part of the book relates the defeat of efforts to create industrial democracy. Instead, as a consequence of national policies to further consumption and suburbanization, a consumers' republic replaced a participatory one. Essentially, according to Fairfield, the public was bought off with bread and circuses. The story ends with the final efforts to create genuine participatory democracy brought down by white flight, class and racial segregation, and the inability of the environmental movement to see in the city the best hope for reigniting civic values.

The Public and Its Possibilities is a highly readable book that covers a great deal of ground and successfully delineates the resurgent efforts by various groups to reinvigorate American democracy. Its picture of the transformation of the Republican Party from defender of abolition to bulwark of propertied conservativism is perhaps its most compelling part. It is flawed, however, by its framing of American history in terms of democrats and anti-democrats. It assumes that if only the democrats had prevailed, we would have a more tolerant, more egalitarian society. Manifestations of regressive sentiments in popular movements (anti-integration, anti-taxation, etc.) are dismissed as products of manipulation rather than genuine indications of people's values, or it is presumed that democratic deliberation would make them disappear. Its method of countering the arguments of the antidemocratic theorists is simply to show the existence of thinkers or groups holding contrary opinions. No reference is made to Louis Hartz's (1955) influential theory in The Liberal Tradition in America, with its discussion of the US tendency to stifle dissent, nor to structuralist studies (e.g., see David Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience, 1985) that provide deeper analyses of the causes of public consciousness. The very term “the public” implies a unity of interest that is belied by all the conflicts detailed by the author.

In sum, then, this is a book well worth reading and assigning, but not to be taken without a liberal dose of skepticism.