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    Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse
    Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse
    Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse
    Audiobook10 hours

    Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse

    Written by Timothy P. Carney

    Narrated by Charles Constant

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    About this audiobook

    Respected conservative journalist and commentator Timothy P. Carney continues the conversation begun with Hillbilly Elegy and the classic Bowling Alone in this hard-hitting analysis that identifies the true factor behind the decline of the American dream: it is not purely the result of economics as the left claims, but the collapse of the institutions that made us successful, including marriage, church, and civic life.

    During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump proclaimed, “the American dream is dead,” and this message resonated across the country.

    Why do so many people believe that the American dream is no longer within reach? Growing inequality, stubborn pockets of immobility, rising rates of deadly addiction, the increasing and troubling fact that where you start determines where you end up, heightening political strife—these are the disturbing realities threatening ordinary American lives today.

    The standard accounts pointed to economic problems among the working class, but the root was a cultural collapse: While the educated and wealthy elites still enjoy strong communities, most blue-collar Americans lack strong communities and institutions that bind them to their neighbors. And outside of the elites, the central American institution has been religion.

    That is, it’s not the factory closings that have torn us apart; it’s the church closings. The dissolution of our most cherished institutions—nuclear families, places of worship, civic organizations—has not only divided us, but eroded our sense of worth, belief in opportunity, and connection to one another.

    In Alienated America, Carney visits all corners of America, from the dim country bars of Southwestern Pennsylvania., to the bustling Mormon wards of Salt Lake City, and explains the most important data and research to demonstrate how the social connection is the great divide in America. He shows that Trump’s surprising victory was the most visible symptom of this deep-seated problem. In addition to his detailed exploration of how a range of societal changes have, in tandem, damaged us, Carney provides a framework that will lead us back out of a lonely, modern wilderness.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 19, 2019
    ISBN9780062894731
    Author

    Timothy P. Carney

    Timothy P. Carney is a father of six children, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a columnist at the Washington Examiner. Tim and his wife, Katie, have raised their family in suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia. Tim grew up with three older brothers in Greenwich Village and later in Pelham, New York. He is the author of Alienated America, The Big Ripoff, and Obamanomics. 

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    Reviews for Alienated America

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Who were the early Trump voters? Carney says the more relevant question is where were the early Trump voters and his answer is communities that have become alienated and believe the American Dream is dead. The American Dream is a community a place where you feel connected via institutions like the church, the baseball league, the Y, the Elks Club, the Union and work. But church is most important. Trump succeeded where civil society died, and people became alienated.The causes of the death of these institutions? International competition, technology displacement, sorting of class by higher education into exclusive communities, centralizing government and its displacement of local charitable and community programs, and the hyper-individualism that encourages a retreat from society.At times I felt like he was holding up the 50’s and the 60’s as the idealic era for the American Dream, but was it instead a unique time that is unreasonable to expect to be replicated. When else will the rest of the world be decimated and unable to compete? I also think it isn’t unusual for society to go through a period of religious withdrawal, which is often times followed by religious revival. So if alienation is a function religious withdrawal and religious withdrawal is cyclical (long cycle) then the Trump phenom is just one of those things that will happen, then go away.I enjoyed this book. It was well written, it was thoughtful and it made me question my views, everything I want from a book. It makes me want to read a book on a history of alienation and its ties to religious withdrawal and revival.2019-10-08

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      4/5 Great book! Definitely worth a listen/read. Nothing like I expected. Highly recommend anyone wishing to understand America's divide on social, political and existential questions give this book a chance