Free Society and Moral Crisis

Must freedom be bought at the price of conflict and chaos? Free society is in a state of crisis, beset with racial and religious tension, family conflict, juvenile delinquency, and rising crime rates. Must it always be so? This is the question Robert Cooley Angell undertakes to answer. "This great study," Reinhold Niebuhr writes in the Foreword, "deals with the peculiar problems of a technical society such as ours-its rapid social change, the anonymity of its urban community, the peculiar hazards of its cities . . . It is a study in social dynamics, tracing the various self-righting tendencies by which pressures from without and within, and catastrophies of external and internal origin, may be met . . . But the book is more than this . . . Angell is studying not merely social integration but also moral discipline. He never loses sight of the full dimension of moral life-its individual no less than its social extension . . . This book-the fruit of wisdom and a vast erudition-thus is a precious resource to the general reader and to the specialist concerned with the problems of social and moral integration."