Review article: The apotheosis of liberalism?An American Dilemmaafter fifty years in the context of the lives of Gunnar and Alva Myrdal

Abstract

Walter A. Jackson, GUNNAR MYRDAL AND AMERICA'S CONSCIENCE: SOCIAL ENGINEERING AND RACIAL LIBERALISM, 1938–1987, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990, xxi + 447pp., $38.45. Sissela Bok, ALVA MYRDAL: A DAUGHTER'S MEMOIR, Reading, MA: Addison‐Wesley Publishing Co., 1991, xvi + 375pp., $22.00 and $12.95 (paper). David W. Southern, GUNNAR MYRDAL AND BLACK WHITE RELATIONS: THE USE AND ABUSE OF AN AMERICAN DILEMMA 1944–1969, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1987, xviii + 338pp., $37.50. Elazar Barkan, THE RETREAT FROM SCIENTIFIC RACISM: CHANGING CONCEPTS OF RACE IN BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, xxii + 508pp., £37.50. Dorothy Ross, THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, xxii + 508pp., £35.00 and £16.95 (paper).