The book's view of history is the standard one, of the one-damned-thing-after-another variety, unadulterated by theorising, which is but laziness in the archives. Radical things were happening in race relations, but the book offers little by way of explanation. Slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow backlash, and the Civil Rights Movement in its peaceful and its violent forms are described but never explained.
The Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, and the U.S. Constitution embody principles. These principles are responsible for Reconstruction and the eventual success of the Civil Rights Movement. They explain progress at low frequencies. The high-frequency oscillations remain unexplained—at least by the book. Just as the principles laid out by the Founding Fathers determine the long-term path of progress, a certain entrepreneurial spirit appears to be responsible for the violent fluctuations along this path.
