Personal Resources
Self-centeredness
Essays, Op-eds, Articles
What Our Biggest Best-Sellers Tell Us About a Nation’s Soul, Louis Menand. Reading America through more than two centuries of its favorite books.
“The works are all mega-sellers... summing up a sort of national consensus about how life should be lived in the United States,... The books McHugh writes about are all how-to or self-help books... McHugh says that her books “continually take the pressure off the system and put it back on the person.”...
People do ask themselves that question. We think, This is my one shot at existence. Could I be doing it better?
...It is no surprise, therefore, that McHugh’s chief criticism of her canon is that these books…are not inclusive….They are written as though anyone could profit from their advice,...
She seems like a person who does not believe in creeds or canons. She prefers, she says, ambiguity and change to the myth of a unified national narrative. But ambiguity and change are just the keywords in a different narrative. The position that we should not want to make all Americans think alike has an exception, which is that we want all Americans to think that we should not want to make all Americans think alike. I would subscribe to that, but it is a creed.”How to Actually Make America Great, David Brooks. “Reversing 50 years of social decline. This pivotal moment isn’t just the result of four years of Donald Trump. It’s the culmination of 50 years of social decay. “The Upswing,” a remarkable new book by Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, puts this situation in stark relief. A careful work of social science, the book looks at American life from about 1870 to today across a range of sectors that are usually analyzed in separate academic silos.
Books
The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again By Robert D. Putnam With Shaylyn Romney Garrett. “An eminent political scientist’s brilliant analysis of economic, social, and political trends over the past century demonstrating how we have gone from an individualistic “I” society to a more communitarian “We” society and then back again, and how we can learn from that experience to become a stronger, more unified nation—from the author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids.”