Potter’s People of Plenty achieved widespread acclaim immediately after its publication, with many historians viewing it as a seminal work in the definition of the American character. In 1955, Irving Wylie of the University of Missouri wrote, “Mr. Potter's book is so much a product of his own sagacity and ingenuity that few others will be able to follow where he has led,” and Boyd Shafer wrote that Potter’s “nine thoughtful essays” were “full of insights and astute observation” thanks to his “careful analysis.” Beyond scholarly opinions, Commentary Magazine declared, “Mr. Potter has pursued the subject of American plenty with a detective’s passion and elaborated it with a metaphysician’s zeal.” However, People of Plenty’s glaring flaw
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Potter was not the only person who didn’t consider the plight of the poor; in the 1950s, suburbanization segregated Americans racially and socioeconomically, to the point that “the 1960 census showed suburbia to be 98% white; it also showed that some of the nation’s larger cities—Washington, D.C., Newark, Richmond, and Atlanta—had black majorities.” While Fred Shannon wrote of People of Plenty in 1955, “I am not yet convinced that there is ‘plenty’ for everybody. I still hear about inadequate housing and about hunger even in this land of milk and honey,” most people admired Potter’s triumphant synthesis of American history and did not share Shannon’s concerns. At this point, activist and political scientist Michael Harrington wrote The Other America, a book that presented the realities of 36 million Americans in poverty and “convinced people of the significance of poverty.” Harrington’s book provided the intellectual framework for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the War on Poverty, and by 1975 only twelve percent of Americans lived in poverty. Robert Collins, who reviewed People of Plenty in 1988, wrote that “historians must recognize also that abundance and scarcity have coexisted in America, and that they have often been linked together in important, if paradoxical, ways.” Potter’s argument was not without validity, but it was incomplete, leading to its fall in popularity over
Potter was not the only person who didn’t consider the plight of the poor; in the 1950s, suburbanization segregated Americans racially and socioeconomically, to the point that “the 1960 census showed suburbia to be 98% white; it also showed that some of the nation’s larger cities—Washington, D.C., Newark, Richmond, and Atlanta—had black majorities.” While Fred Shannon wrote of People of Plenty in 1955, “I am not yet convinced that there is ‘plenty’ for everybody. I still hear about inadequate housing and about hunger even in this land of milk and honey,” most people admired Potter’s triumphant synthesis of American history and did not share Shannon’s concerns. At this point, activist and political scientist Michael Harrington wrote The Other America, a book that presented the realities of 36 million Americans in poverty and “convinced people of the significance of poverty.” Harrington’s book provided the intellectual framework for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the War on Poverty, and by 1975 only twelve percent of Americans lived in poverty. Robert Collins, who reviewed People of Plenty in 1988, wrote that “historians must recognize also that abundance and scarcity have coexisted in America, and that they have often been linked together in important, if paradoxical, ways.” Potter’s argument was not without validity, but it was incomplete, leading to its fall in popularity over