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ROBERT WILLIAM FOGEL, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. Pp. 383. $20.00.
Reviewed by Alan Bearman, Kansas State University
Robert Fogel is the 1993 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is best known for his 1974 study of the economics of American slavery Time on the Cross (coauthored with Stanley L. Engerman). The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism is Fogel's sweeping attempt to understand and explain American life. It is an ambitious work in which the author argues that egalitarianism represents a national ethic for Americans. The foundation of this drive for egalitarianism is found in America's long history of repeated religious awakenings.
In order to demonstrate the increasing equity that this ethic of egalitarianism has brought to life in the United States, Fogel focuses upon...