[3] Daniel Horowitz says The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, in 1950 quickly became the nation’s most influential and widely read mid-century work of social and cultural criticism.
That lifestyle has a coercive effect, which compels people to abandon "inner-direction" of their lives, and it induces them to take on the goals, ideology, likes, and dislikes of their community.
[6] In addition to his many other publications, Riesman was also a noted commentator on American higher education, publishing, with his seminal work, The Academic Revolution, which was co-written with Christopher Jencks.
In it, Riesman sums up his position by stating, "If this book has any single message it is that the academic profession increasingly determines the character of undergraduate education in America."
Riesman noted that the logic isolated any patterns of resistance that might challenge the university's primary purpose as disciplinary research, dashing their chances of success.