Narrative

In The Promise of American Life,Croly presents his political ideas in the form of a narrative. He relates the political history of the United States and of several European nations as a story. He also tells the stories of a large number of statesman who have been influential throughout the course of American politics. In putting forth his ideas in the form of a story, one might think it would make Croly's book more accessible to the average reader. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Complex Sentence Structure

Croly's dense sentence structure serves to muddy the story line, making it a difficult text to work through. Even political analysts find the stories and arguments presented in Croly's work complicated. In his article for Society, Sidney A. Pearson notes, "[I]t is a difficult work to read." This may have been one of the contributing factors that kept...