Well, I can imagine this book would have had more impact in the age before all the things it warns us about came true. Additionally, the writing style was of that strange 1930's-1960's era writing you see occasionally where breezy and overly simplistic prose was fashionable, so I don't want to say it's poor, just that it attempts to be a certain something, achieves it, but I don't care much for it.Did the people that read this in the 1930's understand he was generally AGAINST the way that world was? Because we pretty much did exactly all those things. Save the loss of family identity and our puritanical ways, both of which I personally could have done without. We have a caste system, indoctrination, ubiquitous pharmaceutical use, the distractions of entertainment and sport, and the hatred of true individualism (as opposed to the knee jerk libertarian fantasy type) and the general mistrust of learning...but we managed to keep the pointless attention on the family (OMG OMG OMG...it's about the kids!), and the deeply ingrained American Puritan history. Terrific. If they didn't make you read this in school, there isn't any real social or literary reason to begin now.