A World of Diversity in the Unity

By R. Z. Sheppard

THE BOOK OF AMERICA: INSIDE 50 STATES TODAY by Neal R. Peirce and Jerry Hagstrom; Norton; 910 pages; $25

It is no small comment on the present that it now takes two journalists to do what one John Gunther did some 40 years ago in Inside U.S.A. Gunther's book is clearly the model for Neal Peirce and Jerry Hagstrom's Bunyanesque effort to package the long-and shortcomings of each state in one readable volume. Peirce, a syndicated columnist, and Hagstrom, both editors of the Government affairs weekly National Journal, offer a mint of trivia: the country's longest front porch is at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Mich.; Georgia leads in poultry production; Louisiana is first in frogs' legs.

But beyond these gleanings the authors patiently give substance and shape to the world's most protean political and cultural organism. The standardization of urban skylines, the mailing of the suburbs and monotoning of news barely begin to smooth out the stubborn differences that define each region of the country. Pennsylvanian Peirce and North Dakotan Hagstrom count eight discrete sections: Mid-Atlantic, New England, Great Lakes, Border South, Deep South, Great Plains, Mountain, and Pacific, which includes Alaska, an area so large that it embraces four time zones.

It is now virtually impossible to write about a place where the clock stands still. The one willful exception is Niihau, a privately owned cultural preserve in Hawaii. All visitors, movies, alcohol and dogs are banned from the 18-mile-long island, and Government officials are not permitted to spend the night among the 226 residents, most of whom still claim pure Hawaiian ancestry. On the mainland, small ironies continue to tinge a region's complexion. New Yorkers complain about the Hispanization of the Big Apple, while New Mexicans of Spanish descent grump that their state is becoming too Anglo.

Americans are still the world's most restless people. California, Florida and Texas have attracted enough newcomers to account for 42% of the U.S. population growth during the 1970s. Nevada's head count increased nearly 65%, making it the fastest-growing state. The lure, of course, is gambling, which employs almost one-third of the desolate territory's inhabitants. Nevadans have other dubious distinctions. They have the highest incidence of alcoholism and a suicide rate more than double the national average. There is also Lake Tahoe, whose commercial development the authors call "the most appalling assault on God-given natural beauty on the American continent."

Sensitive land-use laws earn high marks from the roving reporters. Wisconsin and Oregon are paragons of progressivism. But woe unto the state that suffers from a bad revenue base. New Hampshire, which taxes neither sales nor income, is an unfortunate case in point. Residents must pay unusually high levies on real estate but receive substandard public services in return. The state's motto, "Live Free or Die," may have a brave historical ring but makes little fiscal sense. The origins of good leadership, or the lack of it, are as varied as the states. Peirce and Hagstrom suggest that Missouri's skeptical show-me spirit accounts for the caliber of such men as Harry Truman, Clark Clifford and Stuart Symington. Residents of New Jersey have never registered much interest in local government, mainly because most of the state's population lives under the professional and cultural shadow of New York City. By contrast, Louisiana politics, wrote A.J. Liebling, "is of an intensity and complexity that are matched . . .only in the Republic of Lebanon."

Generally blatant corruption at ground level appears to have given way to moral ambiguity and gray areas, where the line between private interest and public responsibility is not always recognized. By and large, traditional power has tended to slip from the grasp of special-interest groups. Pulp and paper companies no longer control Maine; Anaconda Copper has long since closed its "hospitality rooms" in Montana's state capital at Helena; Florida's rural "pork chop gang" must now share power with the arroz con polio and corned-beef crowds, and it has been quite a while since anyone has accused U.S. Steel and the Pennsylvania Railroad of manipulating the Keystone State.

It would be convenient to conclude that Peirce and Hagstrom have assembled a portrait of a middle-aged U.S., its seas a little less shining, the waves of grain ringed by bald patches of subdivisions, the once purple mountains now mauve with smog. But the country does not age evenly. Alaska is barely in its adolescence; high tech has given sagging Massachusetts a facelift, and much of the South is having a rebirth. North Carolina is now tenth in population with the highest percentage of workers employed by industry. Unfortunately, there are signs of sclerosis in the heartland. "Sadly," say the authors, "the most resistant to change were the Midwestern states, where even in the depression of the '80s many leaders in both management and labor seemed to imagine they could continue their old adversarial ways and regain their lost prosperity without fundamental readjustments."

Beneath its richly layered surface, this valuable compendium points to far-reaching changes. One is a Federal Government that no longer feels it can subsidize all pursuits of material satisfaction. Another is an increasingly international economy that is poorly understood even as it pinches the grass roots. A disturbing conclusion, but nobody, least of all the authors, promised that The Book of America had to have a happy ending for everyone.

--ByR.Z. Sheppard

Excerpt

"Iowa is the very heart of the Corn Belt, which stretches from Nebraska and South Dakota clear through to Central Ohio, but only .. . Illinois comes close to Iowa's production . . . With only 1.6% of the land area of the U.S., Iowa has 25% of its Grade A topsoil, a legacy of four glacial sweeps across her surface, the last only 10,000 years ago. A native of rockier places, Robert Frost once said of the rich Iowa earth, 'It looks good enough to eat without putting it through vegetables.' " This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.