Rating
The Pequod Review:
Published in 2012, Charles Murray's Coming Apart argues that a cultural and economic divergence has taken place between the American upper classes and lower classes:
This book is about an evolution in American society that has taken place since November 21, 1963, leading to the formation of classes that are different in kind and in their degree of separation from anything that the nation has ever known. I will argue that the divergence into these separate classes, if it continues, will end what has made America America...
The American project -- a phrase you will see again in the chapters to come -- consists of the continuing effort, begun with the founding, to demonstrate that human beings can be left free as individuals and families to live their lives as they see fit, coming together voluntarily to solve their joint problems. The polity based on that idea led to a civic culture that was seen as exceptional by all the world. That culture was so widely shared among Americans that it amounted to a civil religion. To be an American was to be different from other nationalities, in ways that Americans treasured. That culture is unraveling.
But Murray exaggerates the merits and stability of the pre-1960s period, he overstates the extent of our recent cultural divergence (ignoring all of the ways that society has converged, or at least continues to maintain commonalities), and he blames too many of these unproven trends on the lower classes and their supposed abandonment of traditional values.