JVL Elsewhere

I’ve got two pieces in the new Standard. The first is a review of Mitch Pearlstein’s excellent new book, Broken Bonds. If you’re a layman interested in the sociology of family fragmentation, but don’t want to get into the data too heavily, this is the book for you. Pearlstein has interviewed 40 very smart people–like Kay Hymowitz, Heather Mac Donald, and Isabel Sawhill–and turned the transcripts of those conversations into a coherent and vibrant book. As I say in the review “the overall effect being that the reader feels as though he’s sitting in a coffee shop eavesdropping on a particularly stimulating and elevated discussion.”

The other piece is the Buzzfeedingly-titled “Six Reasons to Panic.” It’s about Ebola.