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DeTocqueville, Bryce, and other visitors to the United States during different periods of the 19th century provided us with remarkably perceptive insights about the attitudes, values, and behavior of Americans. Their observations were often brilliantly informative and have inspired others to search for and elaborate on other aspects of the American character that are of contemporary interest. American Tough is among such works, yet it falls considerably short of providing truly revealing information about the social character of the people of this nation.
Social scientists in general, and psychoanalysts in particular, will be hard pressed to come to terms with the essentially literary, and occasionally superficial and ambiguous phrases and words that abound in this work. The author's flair for verbosity and his penchant for adjectival flourishes interfere with his lending the requisite precision, clarity, and cogency to an opus that unsuccessfully seeks to establish the salience of “tough” and “toughness” as distinctive and determining characteristics of American society from its inception to the present.
Variously defined as dash, daring, endurance, courage, strength, patience, persistence, impact, adventurousness, struggle, the overcoming of obstacles, unflinching in adversity, combativeness, nerve, and the like, “tough” and “toughness” are far better understood as common social characteristics that are rooted in the natural human propensity to be aggressive and assertive. It is also better to understand that their excesses elicit tempering or countervailing responses from those bearing the brunt of them or whose moral standards throw them into questions as dubious extremes of human behavior. Toughness is neither a unique characteristic nor one standing in a special kind of tension with reactions against it, as the author suggests.
Wilkinson relies on information gleaned from a variety of sources (e.g., novels, advertising, poetry, speeches, etc.) to depict the cause