Chapter I is “The Introduction” of And Keep Your Powder Dry as written in 1942. On page 2, Margaret Mead writes:

“The obligation of the scientist to examine his material dispassionately is combined with the obligation of the citizen to participate responsibly in his society. To the investigation of social materials to the end that we may know more —here—now—in America towards fighting the war in a way that will leave us with the moral and physical resources to attack the problem of reorganizing the world.”

(Berghahn Books 2000)

When reading And Keep Your Powder Dry, the time and purpose must stay on the surface. Mead was writing for people in a different century, with a very particular goal in mind. When she writes about the enemy, there’s no ambiguity who she is talking about and she isn’t talking about any present-day enemies. When she says we need to reorganize the world, she means it literally—the world as it was organized in 1942 was not going to survive the end of Nazi Germany. When she speaks of black Americans, the language is archaic. You wouldn’t know unless you are familiar with her story that she was respected by James Baldwin. Mead would not know what an ableist is. Mead was not a time-traveler.

It might not seem like I’m making the case to read this book, but hang in there with me…

Despite the distance Mead has from modern Americans (she was born 99 years before my oldest daughter), she has a clear understanding of what makes our culture unique in the world, because she understood what made other cultures unique. Her ability to contrast and compare us to other cultures allows us to see an American character structure that still very much exists in some very recognizable and surprising ways. Also, she is funny. I hope you keep coming back for the descriptions like, “…civil servants with clothes that look like uniforms or clothes that aggressively do not look like uniforms…” (2000).

Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, Mead brings a humor and wit that I hope you will find as engaging as I do. She also brings a strong understanding of the concepts she is teaching, able to present them with nuance and clarity, simultaneously. She understands not only the strengths and weaknesses of the American character, but the challenges and criticisms of the work she is undertaking. With And Keep Your Powder Dry, Mead gives us a framework for understanding the American character, and, despite some clear limitations brought by her position in the world and the time she was writing, she gives us a role model for how to talk about it.

She has a lot to offer, and presents it with understanding, humor, and self-reflection. I hope you’ll agree in the weeks to come. Thanks for reading with me.

Today marks Super Tuesday of what promises to be a long, trying election year.

It will be said that November’s election will decide many things, and it probably won’t about innumerable policy issues. It will tell us something, though, of who we think we are. I think a challenge we have, and it’s not new to us, is that we don’t exactly know the answer to “who are we?” We have some impressive documents to guide us, but they don’t change that we have wildly different thoughts on what the answer is or should be.

It’s hard to answer, because our country has changed so dramatically, and has helped dramatically change the world, in the centuries it has existed. We are supposed to innovate, adapt, and chart new courses in unimagined places. In this country, we can look back, know the history books left out the stories of many Americans, and demand a rewrite that takes them into account. Add to that, we are a nation of individuals, so we are not beholden to the perceived shared values of one another. Every election, like this election, our shared values are up for debate.

The difficulty of the question doesn’t mean we can’t answer it, though.

We will and must answer “who are we?” at the polls and in our homes, whether we like it or not, so this blog is my effort to lead a discussion about it, by reading a book about it with you. That book is And Keep Your Powder Dry by Margaret Mead.

Originally published in 1942 and most recently in 2000 by Berghahn Books, the book was Mead’s attempt to use her skill as a social scientist to help Americans understand their collective strengths and weaknesses in an effort to win the war and the peace. Needless to say, this leaves room for debate and disagreement. I don’t recommend this book as some inarguable truth nor do I claim Mead or her ideas are somehow beyond reproach. I present it, because she thought a lot about the question and wrote one of the most studied, articulate answers to it.

Any American reading And Keep Your Powder Dry in 2020 is likely to see some of it as clearly wrong, misguided, or just plain puzzling. They are also likely to laugh loudly at times, struck by how right she could get it about present day Americans from way back in the 1940s. Mostly, and the reason I’ve been moved to write this blog, I think anyone who reads this book in this election year will think about the American character and our place in the world in a way that they haven’t, and in a way that we haven’t as a nation, in a long time. She will move you.

Please, find a copy or just read along with me. I am so excited to share this book with you now!

(You can learn more about Mead and 1942 in the Background Links page of the website.)