Coming Apart
The State of White America, 1960-2010
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4.5 • 2 Bewertungen
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- CHF 9.00
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- CHF 9.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A fascinating explanation for why white America has become fractured and divided in education and class, from the acclaimed author of Human Diversity.
“I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.”—David Brooks, New York Times
In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.
Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship—divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.
The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk.
The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Comparing today's class divisions to 1963 conditions, American Enterprise Institute scholar Murray depicts a pernicious erosion of common culture, restricting his analysis to non-Latino whites. Murray builds on research, including statistically based arguments linked to IQ, advanced in 1994's controversial The Bell Curve, to describe the creation of a culturally distinct "new upper class" and its concomitant "new lower class" in places like Austin, Tex.; Manhattan; and Newton, Iowa or the semifictional composite neighborhoods of Belmont, Mass., and Fishtown, Pa. Figures and trends analyzed here lend insight into undeniably massive changes in American society, while more anecdotal evidence (such as Murray's memories of early 1960s Harvard) is open to subjective qualification. Of course, the picture of a snobby and self-selecting, interbreeding class of largely white, highly educated professionals living in "SuperZips" (the top zip codes in terms of advanced education and income) leans on well-worn images of neo-yuppiedom. While Murray insists he's more interested in describing the "nature of the problem" than the causes, his argument would be stronger if it didn't lay so much of the problem at the feet of a self-segregating "new upper class" and its rising incomes and distinct tastes and proclivities. Though it provides much to argue with, the book is a timely investigation into a worsening class divide no one can afford to ignore.
Kundenrezensionen
"Coming Apart" by Charles Murray
This is an excellent book, particularly if you're a 'numbers guy' like I am. The most difficult thing for me, as a person born in 1943, and having attended a really great high school in the late 50's and attending chemical engineering and then MBA school until 1967, is to see how the culture started to break down during this period. And, as a young married adult with a family, I never really noticed the traumatic changes that were starting to take place. One other observation, or perhaps a suggestion: Read Bill O'Reilly's book, "Culture Warrior" either just before or after this book by Charles Murray. Then you can start to understand how the battleground is no longer in just selecting and supporting the right candidate to save our culture, and to bring us back together as a republic of informed citizens in a civil society. The battlegrounds are now in our schools, our places of work and worship (for those that still do) and indeed even within our own families. The primary breakdown is in education, and a knowledge of our history.
The bottom line about this book is that it quantifies for the caring citizen exactly what and why vast cultural changes have taken place, and along with O'Reilly's book, points one in a direction of learning and civil discourse with a lot of misguided fellow citizens.
AC Falk