Research Catalog

Title

Why we're polarized / Ezra Klein.

Author

Klein, Ezra, 1984-

Publication

New York : Avid Reader Press, 2020.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxiii, 312 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• ""America's political system isn't broken. The truth is scarier: it's working exactly as designed. In this book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us -- and how we are polarizing it -- with disastrous results. "The American political system -- which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president -- is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face," writes political analyst Ezra Klein. "We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole." In Why We're Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America's descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the twentieth century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis. This is a revelatory book that will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself."--
• America's political system isn't broken: it's working exactly as designed. But Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us-- and how we are polarizing it-- with disastrous results. In examining the structural and psychological forces behind America's descent into division and dysfunction, he shows that everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Now our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. -- adapted from jacket

Alternative Title

Why we are polarized

Subject

• Polarization (Social sciences)
• Right and left (Political science)
• Identity politics > United States
• Political culture > United States
• POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Conservatism & Liberalism
• POLITICAL SCIENCE / American Government / National
• HISTORY / United States / 21st Century
• Identity politics
• Political culture
• United States

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-296) and index.

Contents

Introduction: What didn't happen -- How Democrats became liberals and Republicans became conservatives -- The Dixiecrat dilemma -- Your brain on groups -- The press secretary in your mind -- Demographic threat -- Interlude -- The media divide beyond left-right -- Post-persuasion elections -- When bipartisanship becomes irrational -- The difference between Democrats and Republicans -- Managing polarization- and ourselves.

Call Number

JFE 20-5040

ISBN

• 9781476700328
• 147670032X

OCLC

1135867397

Author

Klein, Ezra, 1984- author. Author

Title

Why we're polarized / Ezra Klein.

Publisher

New York : Avid Reader Press, 2020.

Edition

First Avid Reader Press hardcover edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-296) and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 20-5040