Behavior: The Nomadic American

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Mobile Americans. In a preface to Strangers, Packard reveals that his concern about mobility springs from his own experiences. As a child in Troy, Pa., he knew everybody within four miles of his father's dairy farm. When Packard was nine, his father made a great leap—115 miles—to become farm supervisor at Pennsylvania State College. His goal: a college education, available at reduced rates to college staffers, for his children. That was a wise decision, Packard believes. But the uprooting was traumatic, especially for his father, who developed a familiar psychosomatic illness: colitis.

"Today," Packard writes, "the nearest relative to my home is 110 miles away." And because so many old neighbors have moved, Packard no longer feels the sense of community he craves.

Convinced that his sense of isolation was anything but unique, Packard began four years ago to apply his own special research techniques to the topic of mobility. Unlike social scientists, who generally assume a theory and then test it, Packard first assembled a miscellany of data. He read studies on mobility by social scientists and, in the absence of an adequate register of mobile Americans, devised his own sleuthing techniques. The best leads, he found, were telephone disconnect orders, because 98% of these are the result of moving plans. Most important, ex-Newspaper Reporter Packard traveled to 24 states and interviewed hundreds of sources. Only when he had amassed a dozen cartons of evidence did he begin evaluating it.

In the past, that method has produced Packard books that were criticized by some sociologists as unscientific. But Packard does not claim to be a scientist; he calls himself an observer and synthesizer. As such, he has sometimes been ahead of scientists in diagnosing the nation's ills, and he has often managed to influence those who do not read scholarly works. The Waste Makers and The Naked Society, for instance, did much to spur the protection of consumers and of the right of privacy. Similarly, perhaps, A Nation of Strangers may succeed in alerting the country to the hazards of mobility.