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Howard Stein has long been one of the most astute and trenchant observers of the American cultural scene from a perspective informed by both cultural anthropology and psychoanalysis. If he is less well known than he deserves to be, this is in part because like anyone with a message that addresses the disavowed motives underlying contemporary social and cultural phenomena, he tells people precisely what they don't want to hear. But he occupies a unique and vital place on the current horizon, precisely because, like a voice crying out in the wilderness (in this case, from the heartland, Oklahoma City, where he is a Professor in the Department of Family and Preventative Medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center), he so persistently draws our attention back to the dynamics that drive our actions and compel us to try to shield ourselves from direct knowledge of what we are up to. He writes from a position informed by tireless immersion as a participant-observer - with a greater-than-usual emphasis on the “participant” part - in the cultural processes and traumas that have scarred and shaped the psyche of America, especially Red State America, over the past couple of decades. Not only an academic scholar, he is a committed activist and public intellectual deeply engaged in the community life around him, whose writings bear the mark of lived experience with and involvement in the issues about which he writes.
Beneath the Crust of Culture is a collection of essays covering an array of subjects bound to interest anyone trying to make sense of contemporary American cultural phenomena, from the aftermath of 9/11 to matters in which Stein's more direct involvement gives him particular authority to speak, such as the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, the execution of its perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, the Columbine High School massacre across the border in Colorado, and, as a backdrop, the decades long juggernaut of downsizing, outsourcing, reengineering, RIFing a