This broad survey of American Civilization, which takes the reader into the 1990s, shows how a special version of the American Dream, which the author calls "the Open Society", in the early 1800s changed the concept of what a society is. After a historical introduction, the author proceeds to outline the way the open-society concept in particular has influenced domestic and foreign policy, politics, religion and practically all other ways of life up to our own days. By privatizing society, the author argues, the opensociety approach was particularly conductive to a commercial civilization.