Country of Exiles

March 29, 1999
Pointing to the lack of rootedness and community in what he calls the "global age," Leach (Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture) explores and laments the centrifugal forces forever flinging Americans out of their localities into a borderless world. Alternating between observations on contemporary capitalism and cultural criticism, Leach offers a blend of populist indignation (e.g., at corporations with no sense of loyalty to a particular place and its workers), nativist insularity and atavistic yearning for stability. To illustrate the extent to which American culture has commodified the very idea of place, he offers an intelligent analysis of that endlessly captivating distillation of rootlessness, Las Vegas, a city which "flouts the past" and "serves only people on the move." Leach captures many aspects of a somewhat slippery topic, at times writing eloquently of how individuals are routinely uprooted and denatured by the pace of modern life in a world marked by incessant air travel, unimpeded worldwide shipping, an influx of and dependence on tourism--a world in which both people and goods richochet around the globe. Implicit, however, but never fully articulated by Leach, is the larger question of whether our endless pursuit of wealth is the chief culprit. That question will linger in the minds of readers after they finish this ambitious and absorbing reflection.