Audiobook12 hours
The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart
Written by Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing
Narrated by Paul Brion
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
In 2004, journalist Bill Bishop coined the term "the big sort." Armed with startling new demographic data, he made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities-not by region or by state, but by city and even neighborhood. Over the past three decades, we have been choosing the neighborhood (and church and news show) compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. The result is a country that has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred that people don't know and can't understand those who live a few miles away. How this came to be, and its dire implications for our country, is the subject of this groundbreaking work.
In The Big Sort, Bishop has taken his analysis to a new level. He begins with stories about how we live today and then draws on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.
In The Big Sort, Bishop has taken his analysis to a new level. He begins with stories about how we live today and then draws on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.
Author
Bill Bishop
Bill Bishop is a futurist, entrepreneur, author, and keynote speaker. He is the CEO of The BIG Idea Company, an innovation coaching company based in Toronto, and also the founder of The New Economy Network, a global network of business people who are passionate about the new economy.
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Reviews for The Big Sort
Rating: 3.5416667375 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
96 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One of my mottos has always been "We're all from tribes not countries". Tribal boundaries overlay political boundaries. They are metageographical and are by nature invisible. Our tastes and preferences are a way of making the boundaries palpable.This book might be filed under marketing, which would do a great injustice. It is amusing that even book categories are at the mercy of the boundaries of a label.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The author proves beyond a shadow of a doubt with well researched and documented evidence that "The Big Sort" is a real modern phenomenon. Where this book fails is proving that it is bad. There's some anecodotal stuff and some tenuous historical precidents but nothing really solid. As a side note this book contains a pretty cool history of the Protestent church in the last century. Some of his points here might be debated but a nice timeline nonetheless.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The introduction was good and explained the idea well. The rest of the book felt repetitive. Some of his numbers seemed off as well.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In this interesting book Bill Bishop describes the polarization of American politics from 1965 onwards. He is fairly obviously a Democrat but goes out of his way to speak to new millennium Republicans and appreciate their world view.He describes the "Big Sort" very convincingly, particularly the way that Republicans and Democrats drift towards their respective majority states, or at least the majority Republican or Democratic areas within each state, and the way that this seems to happen almost unconsciously by what "feels right and comfortable" about the surroundings.One way or another Americans seem to gravitate towards two very different lifestyles; A) the city / anonymous / environmental / minority-rights / European / intellectual/ state-interventionist, or B) the country / community / traditional / religious / Constitutional / nationalist / self-reliant with Democratic and Republican loyalists dividing neatly along these lines.He shows the result as a separation and hardening of positions generating the familiar American Gridlock politics of the new millennium, and as he says, "Democracy has become so balky that the normal processes of representative government are being replaced by systems of issue brokering that are only quasi-representative"......" public policy is often negotiated among interest groups". This would be a great lead in to look at where the power went and who these interest groups are but he doesn't follow it.Maybe they're not particularly Democratic or Republican and they just want the money and the influence, but the author doesn't really go into this interesting question.The author seems to be more concerned with establishing the reality of the "Big Sort" rather than evaluating it in a historical context. He refers to the early 1970's research of Robert Inglehart at the University of Michigan, suggesting that a young generation growing up in abundance will esteem self expression more than economic growth as they seek "higher values", but he doesn't refer to the more recent and much richer version of this idea available in for example "The Fourth Turning" by William Strauss and Neil Howe.The book doesn't consider that the opposing factors of the "Sort" seem to coexist quite happily in some countries. Japan can be very respectful of tradition and community while developing leading high technologies with the same going for Germany and northern Europe in general.The author doesn't look at the fairly obvious divide between Original Americans (OAs) and Newcomers (N's). OA's were in American prior to 1900, they mostly originated from European countries and now regard themselves as Americans first and have strong links to the Constitution and American history and also provided most of the troops and leadership in the two world wars. N's arrived after 1900 and are now mostly non-European hyphenated Americans with weak links to American traditions and a preference for identity politics, non-integration and minority rights and they predictably find their natural home in the Democratic party.Equally, Bishop doesn't consider the 1965+ rise to power of the Jews as a prime example of an American special interest insider group. He does talk about the rise of advocacy groups that aren't broad based or democratically controlled but he could have shown Jewish tribal self-selection producing for example the present (2013) strange situation where the eight leading candidates for the post of Federal Reserve chairman are all Jewish or married to Jews (apart from Geithner) or Jewish students comprising 30% of Ivy League university enrolment. This is a major shift of power to a non-European and non-Christian newcomer minority group (3% of the population) which is also firmly on the Democratic left.The author could also usefully have looked at the way in which the growing demands of the Democratic left generate a more extreme reaction from the traditionalist Republican right. For example he could have shown how the gay rights idea has progressed from 1965 onwards through illegality > ignoring > acceptance > protection > coming out > legal rights > marriage equality and adoption > to school teaching which is fine in a minority rights environment but is seen as provocative when legally applied traditional Americans. In general I think that the "Big Sort" was a missed opportunity but it does provide indisputable evidence for the post 1965 polarization of the Republican and Democratic parties.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Most provocative book I've read on American life since Jane Jacobs' "Death and Life of Great American Cities." Bishop says gerrymandering isn't the key cause of entrenched Washington members of Congress; rather, Americans have been segregating themselves sociologically and politically since 1965 into increasingly homogeneous counties and election districts. People are clustering with PLUs, "people like us." This clustering generates increasingly partisan and intemperate political results, as members of the majority socially vie with each other to be "more" mainstream, and the disaffected minority increasingly opts out of political activity or simply moves to a more socially/politically comfortable town. Very scary.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I agree... quirky. But having read it, I feel better equipped to understand and discuss various issues which confront us all. Understanding the "sorting behavior" of Americans (and others around the world?) at least helps to explain why things always feel so confrontational and unresolvable -- perhaps some solutions to this dilemma are implicit in the understanding of the phenomena. Reading this book along with Florida's "The Great Reset" helps put it into context. Then read Kiernan's "Authentic Patriotism" and Tapscott & Williams' "MacroWikinomics" for welcome antidotes.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quite good if quirky demographics work that the author stretches WAY too far. Must be read with a critical eye but quite useful if you know how to do that.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This is one of those books that should have been a magzine article, not a book. The theory about where we live is impressive and interesting. The fact that he takes a whole book to say it is anything but impressive. Boring, boring, boring.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Interesting but discouraging. The idea that almost no one believes in common ground any longer is pretty bleak. He seemed pretty even-handed. Openly liberal but repeatedly debunks the big anti-Republican conspiracy theories. And does a refreshingly nice job of never mocking his interview subjects. He certainly got Oregon right. Random interesting bits: The proportion of companies with employees from a wide range of educational backgrounds has dropped a lot over the last 50 years; that changes the diversity of experience and ideas we're exposed to. The more a city has in terms of culture and ethnic restaurants and creative-class jobs and such, the less people are socially connected (what a depressing trade-off!). The college kid who 'needed' to move from a general dorm to a special-interest one in order to 'find balance.' Very unhealthy. And apparently we have so little in common these days, that it's hard for the quiz shows to come up with questions that most contestants and the audience will understand.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bishop describes the increasing polarization of American communities. There are Republican/conservative counties and neighborhoods, and there are Democratic/liberal counties and neighborhoods. Places where Democrats and Republicans are evenly mixed are becoming rarer. Bishop shows that this has happened not because of Gerrymandering or organized conspiracies, but because of individual decisions. Traditional institutions of government, mainline denominations, and unions have all lost credibility. As they have, people have migrated so as to live in like minded areas. Various triggers, including the culture wars of the 60s and racial divides, have been suggested for this change, but the book doesn't so much explain the sort as show how large the effect has been and how many things it is affecting. Most counties in the US are now landslide counties in the way that they vote. This is new, and was not the case prior to 1976. Within like minded communities, the prevailing opinions tend to become more extreme, as community members establish themselves as having adopted the values of the community. The two groups don't watch the same news, don't go to the same churches, don't choose the same leisure activities, and have different priorities for how they want their children to behave.Formerly, not only did members of different parties often mix, but knowing a person's position on one issue did not tell much about their position on other issues, nor for that matter, about their lifestyle. Now it does. If one knows the dominant neighborhood position on government spending, one can make a very good guess about the local thinking on mass transit, military interventions, abortion, prayer in schools, gays, guns, and environmental issues, as well as what kinds recreation are popular and whether people are likely to drive Priuses or Chevy Suburbans. Political parties no longer play for the center, which is small and ineffectual. Instead each party adopts strategies and positions that mobilize that party's base. Values issues, such as the teaching of evolution, have become much more important in people's association with a political position than pocketbook questions. Lack of faith public institutions such as public schools and government agencies have diminished support for all common efforts, in favor of value divides.The transition to a services economy has also promoted division, between highly educated technical professionals and the less educated. The split is an urban/rural split: liberals move to the city to enjoy the culture and the lifestyle, while conservatives move to the exurbs to go someplace they feel safe. This trend was not all reversed in the Obama election by the way: In an enormous swath of the country reaching from southwest New York through the Appalachian region and continuing across Oklahoma, Arkansas, and northern Texas, Obama carried not one county.Bishop doesn't have ideas on how the trend might be reversed, but he is very clear that it is bad for democracy. There isn't much dialog going on. There is very little mutual trust. And government is nearly deadlocked. Perhaps this will lead to decentralization of political initiative as like minded counties and states implement their own measures, with a diminishing sense of common nationhood as a result.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A fascinating book documenting how Americans are using their ability to move to "sort" themselves into homogeneous, same-thinking commmunities that rarely have to interact with others who think differently. The key is that this is not done purposefully, but rather in the simple choices one has in finding a place to live that seems comfortable for them. the problems with this sorting is that these communities start to become echo chambers for their particular veiws, and that drives them to ever greater extremes, making discussion between different communities uncommon, and uncomfortable when it does have to occur. Well researched, competently written, this book explores the many different ways this affect us all. On the negative side (only slightly) it seems like the material is stretched just a bit in order to make it book length. But it is fascinating and thought-provoking in any case.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Describes last 50 years of sucessful church recruitment as that which is along lines of Rev. McGavan's findings in "The Bridges of God" - that evangelizing peoples worked best through homogenous units; that people are not attracted to a church filled with a diverse memership, but a church custom-built for people like themselves. This leads in church (and rest of life) to the 'disappearing middle', where churches and current political parties are built not around a geographic community full of some diversity, but consist of people with similar lifestyles and outlooks.The important thing is not if a chruch is Methodist or Baptist or Episcopal, but if the "service begins with praise music, Handel, or Sting". According to the Big Sort, when given a choice, "we select sameness" (in party, religion, commuity). In last 50 years, marketing, religion, & polticis are reinforcing and deepening the "segmented & segregated lives Americans live today". Many examples of the Big Sort are from studies of modern American religion -- for instance that "people come to faith most often through a network of friends and family. Friendship came first and then conversion"Currently says The Big Sort: the USA has sorted & polarized so that voters in are recent elections have "approached the race more like British voters casing votes for a parliamentary majority than like Americans weighing the unique merits of individual candidates"Conclusion of The Big Sort : "Now more isolated than ever in our private lives, cocooned with our fellows, we approach public life with the sensibility of customers who are always right. Tailor-made has worked so well for industry and social networking sites, for subdivisions and churches, we expect it from our government too. But democracy doesn't seem to work that way."