Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Mini-Review: "The Big Sort"

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop


My review


rating: 5 of 5 stars
I like to mix it up with people who do not share my worldview. If Bill Bishop is right, this makes me an American oddity.



According to this book, since the 1960s, Americans have been sorting themselves out into like-minded tribal communities, whose members reinforce one another's already-existing views, attitudes, and prejudices. The end product of this "Big Sort" is an increasingly polarized body politic, more ideologically pure parties, the urban-rural electoral split I've remarked on several discussion boards, and quite possibly the end of America as we've known it (a conclusion Bishop does not reach in the book, which ends with an answer posed in the form of a question).



Are we "one nation, after all"? You might indeed wonder after reading this book, which offers many useful insights into how our politics and culture reached its current curdled state.


View all my reviews.

No comments: