- ISBN13: 9780618689354
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
The untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided
America may be more diverse than ever coast to coast, but the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote as we do. This social transformation didn’t happed by accident. We’ve built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood — and religion and news show — most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with th… More >>
The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart
Skip this book. It is one more liberal enclave self-love fest in the genre of Richard Florida. In fact, Florida is quoted quite a bit. Whenever these pop-regional science people need to put a book together, they follow the simple formula of stroking their neighbors in Boulder and Raleigh, and insulting a few cities – Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, etc.
For this thesis, it makes no sense. All of the latter cities are extremely democratic in their voting. So why aren’t they attracting more left-leaning residents like Boston or DC? Because they are not state/national capitals with the power to tax the hinterland. They are not regional hubs like Chicago or NY. And they are not small enough to be carried by their universities.
Bishop makes an ignorant mistake on page 131. He lists Cleveland’s college graduation rate as 14%. That’s the rate for the central city with less than a quarter of the area’s residents. Cleveland’s college graduates live in the inner ring suburbs such as Cleveland Heights, Shaker, and Lakewood (with beautiful neighborhoods of century homes, and very democratic voting, btw). Depending on how you define the metro area, the percentage of college grads (over 25 yrs old) is 24 to 27. That’s about average for the US. Pittsburgh’s and Detroit’s percentages are slightly higher. But how could he fill the pages of his book without recognizable cities to look down on? The Austin resident wouldn’t bother looking down on El Paso or Victoria, TX, because readers don’t even know where they are.
The “left-behind” cities have hundreds of thousands of residents who didn’t make it through college. These people get by with whatever work is left for them in a post-industrial economy. All the liberals claim to care about the working class, but most of them take the first chance they get to move a thousand miles away. Fifty years ago, Madison, San Jose, Boulder, and Ithaca were just slightly more populated than the cornfields that were paved into suburbs. Its middle class flight on a national scale, and books like this just encourage it.
Rating: 1 / 5
People are being polarized by, among other things, the divisive elitist propaganda from PR agents like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy. They lead a sort of cult following of people who learn to ignore and hate people who think differently from themselves. On top of the media manipulators that are dividing people, the way many of our suburban communities are designed also lend themselves to isolation and groupthink The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America.
Thankfully, there are areas where progressive people can feel community amid America’s fascist threat The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. There are also progressive talk radio hosts who are more inclusive and tolerant, such as Bob Kincaid, Ed Schultz Straight Talk from the Heartland: Tough Talk, Common Sense, and Hope from a Former Conservative, and Thom Hartmann What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy.
Hopefully the corruption of the power elite will bring more of the general public together. As magazines like Yes! have suggested, we’re a lot more purple than we are red or blue, and share many more radical left-wing positions (raising the minimum wage, compassion for immigrants, less weapons spending, more spending on sustainability, gay rights) than the ruling class want us to know.
See also:
Escape From Suburbia: Beyond the American Dream Dvd!
Utne
The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community
Rating: 4 / 5
I was fascinated by much of the discussion but bored to death with the repetition and redundancy. The author’s say the same thing over and over,paraphrasing or using the same words, issues, or concepts they’ve already used. This may have made a larger impact as an article or series of articles, it doesn’t make it as a book. The “research” is overdone and often makes for a BORING journey through some very important issues.
Gimme a break,the book comes off amateurish. Where’s the editing? It could easily be a hundred pages shorter and the reader wouldn’t be missing anything.
I don’t see polarization as a good thing as many of the reviewers here seem to. I know it’s natural but it also makes for horrors like religion, nationalism, prejudice, conformity, small mindedness, etc., some of the worst traits and institutions of human beings based on their limitations we’re never going to evolve from if we keep it up. On the other hand dispute, disagreement, debate, scientific method, and inquiry are the only things that keep humanity growing, if that is what we’re doing, I sometimes doubt it.
I didn’t find the arguments against polarization strong enough, not that we could stop it. They make it sound appealing, it is, to maybe a great degree, but it doesn’t make us stronger.
I’ve lived in a very unlike minded community for a long time that for some reason I’ve been reluctant to leave even as I’ve become more politically sophisticated. I like one of the statements made right at the beginning of the book,”The most valuable thing that I learn daily is the capacity to respect people with whom I have disagreements. I hope not to be exiled to some place where the vast majority agrees with me.” This describes my experience and what I’ve learned. I’ve had the opportunity, I haven’t always liked it, to rub elbows, discuss, and make friends with people with whom I disagree on many issues. The great benefit, I don’t think many people have, or avail themselves of, is to know, talk to, and hang out with people unlike themselves. What we discover is that regardless of our differences we are human beings at heart sharing a great voyage together into the unknown.
Rating: 3 / 5
I’m surprised that others are shocked by the revelation that people like to live with and hang out with others who have similar values and interests. The entire concept of federalism is in response to this unavoidable fact. People (and every other mobile living thing on the planet) vote with their feet, always have, always will. Who do you date? Somebody you hate and who doesnt like anything you like? Well, duh. How is that gonna work? And if everybody around you thinks like you do, then what prompted you to go to amazon to research this book before your friends got here? There is nobody exactly like you and most of us who didnt get our natural curiosity beat out of us look for things. We are always seeking something. In fact humans, as the most complex of living things, are designed to have the desire to seek alternatives because, surprise, environments change (that damn sun and those pesky earthquakes) and S happens, so we are forced to seek out alternatives. And what’s the purpose of seeking or searching, researching, discovering, inventing, creating, etc, etc? It is to find or make something or somebody or somewhere that for whatever reason pleases us more. Seems pretty simple. It’s a beautiful thing, enjoy it.
Rating: 5 / 5
The condition of the book was great. It arrived earlier than I expected. Living in Alaska usually means it takes things 10 days to 2 weeks to get here. Either that or I have to pay extra to have it mailed up here.
The book has an interesting perspective on the clustering of the population. Humans have always wanted to associate with their own kind whether it is race, income level, age group, political or religious. Only time will tell what will happen to America.
Rating: 5 / 5