Coming Apart
Books | Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General
4
Charles Murray
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 TimesIn 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.
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Author
Charles Murray
Pages
432
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Published Date
2013-01-29
ISBN
030745343X 9780307453433
Community ReviewsSee all
"Before there was "Hillbilly Elegy", there was "Coming Apart". Murray - who is one of the most prominent and persuasive conservative thinkers of our time - explains how the "the increasing market value of brains, wealth, the college sorting machine, and homogamy" are driving the formation of a self-contained and self-perpetuating elite in America. He explores this class-based divergence by tracing its fault lines in four major areas - industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religion.<br/><br/>Murray convinced me that the divergence is real. I'm less convinced by his diagnosis of the root causes or of his prescription for the future. In true conservative fashion, Murray thinks that the welfare state has taken away people's responsibility for their outcomes and thus their satisfaction/purpose in life:<br/><br/><blockquote>In each of those domains [family, vocation, community, and faith], responsibility for the desired outcome is inseparable from the satisfaction</blockquote><br/><br/>He proposes that if rich, white people abandoned their politically correct moral relativism and spoke their mind about the failures of the "lower" classes, things would somehow get better:<br/><br/><blockquote>A large part of the problem consists of nothing more complicated than our unwillingness to say out loud what we believe. A great many people, especially in the new upper class, just need to start preaching what they practice.</blockquote><br/><br/>I suppose I'd be more convinced if this didn't sound like a classic "grumpy old man" perspective. But hey - this is a grumpy old man with a lot of data! And if we're going to have a nanny state anyways, maybe the nanny needs to inculcate some moral values as well. Worth a read because it's still one of the best books on an issue that is receiving increasing play in the national media.<br/><br/>Full review and highlights at: <a href="http://books.max-nova.com/coming-apart/">http://books.max-nova.com/coming-apart/</a>"
Max Nova
"I received a copy of this book with a request for an honest review.<br/>Coming Apart is an engaging story about sisterhood, womanhood and survival set during the Depression Era that follows the lives of two sisters, Ava and Claire, and Ava’s daughter Pearl. The story is told in alternating chapters by the sisters, with diary entries from young Pearl also woven into the story. It is a story that explores a myriad of themes: reinvention, sacrificial love, love of family, social caste, man against nature, coming of age. There was a lot to unpack in this story, which I described to a friend as sort of like The Nightingale but with a not so tragic ending. Although the story does have a fair amount of tragedy, its ends on a note of hopeful expectancy. We see in sisters, evolution of parts of what makes each woman strong and capable manifested into them individually. I really enjoy historical fiction, and am looking forward to reading the next chapter in this story."
Liz Thurman