According to the first view, America suffers from elaborate corruption in business and labor, and in law enforcement practices; from a growing concentration of business power; from the influences of mass media run by entertainment tycoons who satisfy the lowest common denominator in popular taste; and from a wasteful expenditure of resources directed to the enhancement of social status. This book tries, in part, to reconcile these two pictures. To look at America in a comparative and historical context is to point up the fact that such contrasts have distinguished American society through its history. The contrasts, moreover, are linked to two basic American values-equality and achievement. These values, though related, are not entirely compatible; each has given rise to reactions which threaten the other.