Robert and Helen Lynd set out to study the spirituality in a representative American town in the late 1920s, but instead wound up studying the inhabitants' entire culture. Their work, one of lasting impact and the first "functionalist" study in American sociology, combined sociology and anthropology and considered society on a holistic level. Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, first published in 1929 and named after the pseudonym of the place studied—Muncie, Indiana—was a work of both critical and popular acclaim, changing traditional disciplinary attitudes about sociological studies and exposing the public to the shifts in the social fabric brought about by burgeoning consumerism.

Ironically, neither Robert Lynd (1892-1971) nor his wife Helen Merrell Lynd (1896-1981) were formally trained sociologists. Robert Lynd, a graduate of the Union Theological Seminary, began his work as a Christian minister, but soon became disenchanted by his own admitted agnosticism. Helen...