Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 by Charles Murray

Jan 30, 2012 Hadrian rated it did not like it

Shelves: usa, politics-and-foreign-policy, society-culture-anthropology-etc, economics-finance-business, nonfiction

This was an incredibly frustrating book.

It starts off with a statistical analysis on income disparity and social segregation. The basic topics are well-established in American discourse. However, he ascribes an unusual cause - the rise of liberal technical classes, and the lack of the 'moral character' of the poor. The elites are sorted out due to technical skill and intelligence, so he says, and place themselves in nice little ritzy neighborhoods and thus refuse to enact meaningful social help This was an incredibly frustrating book.

It starts off with a statistical analysis on income disparity and social segregation. The basic topics are well-established in American discourse. However, he ascribes an unusual cause - the rise of liberal technical classes, and the lack of the 'moral character' of the poor. The elites are sorted out due to technical skill and intelligence, so he says, and place themselves in nice little ritzy neighborhoods and thus refuse to enact meaningful social help for the proles.

To be fair, it is possible for those with technical education to move away from their rural hometowns and live in nicer areas. That's social mobility, especially possible for those with technological or knowledge-based occupations. His later discussion of community-based thinking is a position that is treasured by both left and right. Communities bring people together. But as he turns to the discussion of the poor, the analogy starts to fall apart.

The leftist policies which the 'liberal elite' espouses at least attempt to address some of the worst effects of income discrepancies. Welfare reform, health care reform, education reform, etc. If he wanted to get into the idea of elites, it would only be fair to bring up Super-PACs and how single plutocrat individuals are able to keep political campaigns afloat far more than the average prole.

It is a myopic view of history, claiming that the social policies of the Great Society in the 1960s were responsible for the moral decay of the American public. Why didn't the New Deal and the subsequent 'Moral Decay' afterwards, of World War 2 and the 1950s? Or is that contradiction too inconvenient for this hypothesis?

And what of western Europe and Scandinavia, with its social democracy? Granted, they have their own share of economic problems, but the larger industrial powers aren't as bad off as we are. Why aren't these heathen nations suffering, with their laziness and atheism?

And why are the lower classes down on their luck? Is it because of outsourced jobs, a judiciary which defines corporations as people and allows the free reign of lobbyists to spread plutocratic interests? A truly indolent legislature? The collapse of the union system? The dismantling of the welfare system, heralded by libertarians and social conservatives, with pseudo-racist rhetoric on mythical welfare queens? A minimum wage which has fallen behind a living wage standard?

Of course not! Instead, the poor are such because they are Lazy and Indolent and Immoral and will Never Amount to Anything Unless They Do As I Say. They will 'pull themselves up by their own bootstraps', but the bootstraps are gone, and only 'I told you so' rhetoric will save them. An idealized Libertarian version of the Founding Fathers is described (to say nothing of the fact that 1) they were not a homogenous political group to begin with, and 2) some advocated a form of proto-social security for the common good), as well as conservative legislation which will claim to be in support of Families, while directly hindering them (women's reproductive rights, gay marriage rights, etc.)

Even worse than The Bell Curve. ...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Lewis Weinstein rated it did not like it

Shelves: non-fiction

"I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s 'Coming Apart.'” --David Brooks, The New York Times

"Mr. Murray's sobering portrait is of a nation where millions of people are losing touch with the founding virtues that have long lent American lives purpose, direction and happiness." --W. Bradford Wilcox, The Wall Street Journal

It’s always daunting to disagree with such eminent authorities, but I see “Coming Apart” as little more than right wing political scree "I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s 'Coming Apart.'” --David Brooks, The New York Times

"Mr. Murray's sobering portrait is of a nation where millions of people are losing touch with the founding virtues that have long lent American lives purpose, direction and happiness." --W. Bradford Wilcox, The Wall Street Journal

It’s always daunting to disagree with such eminent authorities, but I see “Coming Apart” as little more than right wing political screed dressed up in the trappings of the author’s “alleged” research findings.

It seems to me that Charles Murray decided first on the point of view he wanted to espouse, i.e., that the declining lower middle class is the cause of its own problems due to their failure to maintain what he calls the “founder virtues" (especially industriousness and marriage). Answers clearly in mind, he then selectively dug out data and prepared analyses to support his pre-ordained conclusions.

In my view, Murray didn’t do much of a job with either the data or the analysis, and his conclusions therefore remain little more than an expansion of his original biased speculation.

Murray’s “facts” are concocted according to rules which do not come close to conforming to the kind of rigorous investigative procedure practiced by researchers who really want to learn something. Mostly derived from census data, Murray excludes any categories which would complicate his conclusions (like blacks, mixed-marriages, scholarship students), and groups the rest of America’s humanity into two over-simplified constructs he calls “Belmont” (the elite ones sort of like him) and “Fishtown” (some imaginary lower middle class group that none of the elite know much about). Finally, Murray camouflages this highly selective witches brew with a patina of mostly obvious observations which, while often true, do nothing to buttress his conclusions.

Of course Murray, and the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank of which he is a part, have a serious right wing agenda, and it is within this context that “Coming Apart” must be viewed. It is a political document - nothing more - which should not be accepted as sociological or demographic or any other kind of disciplined analysis. It is intended to blame the poor for their problems, and even more importantly, excuse the wealthy from any responsibility towards the less fortunate among us.

Now, I do not argue that every aspect of what liberal government seeks to do for its poorer citizens is successful. Some of it is horribly conceived and incompetently executed. Some of it is corrupt. Murray points out these failures, and in this he is correct. But there have also been significant successes (voting rights for minorities, equal rights for women, early education programs in disadvantaged neighborhoods, diversified admissions programs at elite colleges), and the goal to enable all Americans to have a fair chance to engage in "the pursuit of happiness" was and is critically important.

Here’s why: If our country does not figure out how to help those who are now spiraling downward become productive members of our economic and political society, they and their children will continue to be a serious drag on America’s ability to succeed in a competitive world. How will we fare as a country where many of our citizens contribute little and an ever-larger percentage of our resources must be devoted to their support? This is one of those instances where compassion and self-interest are perfectly aligned.

Murray’s analysis, which I see as both wrongheaded and poorly argued, does serve one useful purpose. It gets us talking about political issues which we ought to be addressing, although not perhaps in the way Murray and his group would like.

Let’s see, where do you think contraception, universal healthcare, education and broad electoral rights fit into this discussion?
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May 17, 2014 John-Paul rated it liked it

This book has earned many 1-star reviews and many 5-star reviews. I don't like to present myself as some kind of political Goldilocks, but I must say that I disagree with most of Murray's political leanings and assumptions but I also learned a lot from this book. So three stars it is.

The parts of this book about elites are all stuff I (and probably you) have heard before. Educated people who have jobs that require some measure of skill and intelligence tend to live close to one another, associat This book has earned many 1-star reviews and many 5-star reviews. I don't like to present myself as some kind of political Goldilocks, but I must say that I disagree with most of Murray's political leanings and assumptions but I also learned a lot from this book. So three stars it is.

The parts of this book about elites are all stuff I (and probably you) have heard before. Educated people who have jobs that require some measure of skill and intelligence tend to live close to one another, associate with one another, have the same tastes and values and preferences, etc. Murray backs this up with some useful data and makes the serious point that it was not always thus. Though there have always been rich people who lived their own way, there were educated people who earned decent salaries with their brains, somewhat more money than the laborers who worked with their backs, but the managers' and the laborers' lives weren't all that different. They lived near one another, sent their kids to the same schools, attended the same churches. But since the 60s, the elites separated from the herd.

That brings us to the second, far more interesting and disturbing section of the book, which is about the non-elites and how much their lives suck. The data is crushing in most senses of the word. It wasn't always like this. But the separation from the educated professionals has made the non-educated non-elites' lives worse in every conceivable way. (I call them "non-educated non-elites because there is no satisfying term for them, which is significant in and of itself.)

The people who gave this book 1 star seem to have read an entirely different book than I did. They see Murray blaming the poors for being lazy and stupid. I see him simply noting how the American landscape has changed. We can play chicken-and-egg with values and economic conditions all day but that's just what we do while other people's lives get worse.

I have many of my own thoughts on this subject but they don't really matter. I think this book is worth reading, not just for the charts, but because it ends with Murray's open admission of the limitations of his own politics. He calls himself a "libertarian" and he says that government shouldn't get involved in things like this, but that leads him to admit that he is helpless before the problems he has just clearly diagnosed. Libertarianism depends a huge amount on what's called "civil society" to provide what a welfare state tries to provide, and when civil society goes away, it's hard to get it back or find anything adequate to replace it. Libertarianism is like a political version of Christian Science.

A side issue (that's not really a side issue) on method and discipline: this book focuses on what Murray calls "white America" (sorry I didn't get into race in this review... you can read almost all the others for that) in 1960-2010. Murray is a sociologist, but what that really means is that he's a highly opinionated journalist who can do regression analyses. What he should be -- or what we need -- is a historian. It would really help if he could, y'know, talk about the stuff that happened around 1960 that brought about these changes, good and then also make meaningful points about how this is all somehow different from 1860 or 1760, and/or how America is different from other countries, etc. But we don't get any of this, so "Coming Apart" is simultaneously far-reaching and exceedingly narrow. ...more

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Feb 29, 2012 Faith rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: sociology, borrowed-from-the-library, e-books

Here's a nice little summary of the book:

Poor people are unsuccessful because they're lazy, immoral, and stupid. Upper and upper middle class people are successful because they are smart, morally upright and industrious. However, they are elitist snobs who are too far removed from poor people. Hence, poor people are suffering. They don't have a good example of how to be industrious and moral. As for being smart, well poor people can just forget it. With the exception of a few lucky members, they ...more

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Feb 08, 2012 Jessica Scott rated it it was amazing

If you want to have a discussion about class in America, you MUST read this book. This book was eye opening in many significant ways and the most troubling part is that if Murray is even half right, the American experiment is coming to an end. He echoes the call of other authors/intellectuals such as Michael Sandel in Justice for a civic awakening so that the stratification of American doesn't continue. But short of a vast swath of the well to do reinvesting in the culture that so enabled them a ...more

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Feb 19, 2012 Socraticgadfly rated it did not like it

Shelves: politics-public-policy

"Coming Apart" is quite possibly more mendacious than "The Bell Curve." It's certainly more hypocritical, and given that Murray's whole thesis is ultimately a screed against the Great Society more spiteful.

In this long review, I'm going to list in exquisite detail all the problems it has, which lead me to note that Paul Krugman, in an oped column about the book, was far, far too nice.

The single biggest statistical/demographic/historical problem with “Coming Apart” is that the lesser income inequ ...more

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Mar 15, 2012 Orrin Woodward rated it it was amazing

Charles Murray's book pinpoints the unraveling of America's community over the last 50 years and shares a plan for its restoration. It's one of the few books that I purchased and read within the week. Truthfully, it was hard to put down!

Although many believe that the complex challenges facing us today cannot be solved through the lens of the American founder's virtues, Murray writes:

I take another view: The founders were right. The success of America depended on virtue in the people when the cou Charles Murray's book pinpoints the unraveling of America's community over the last 50 years and shares a plan for its restoration. It's one of the few books that I purchased and read within the week. Truthfully, it was hard to put down!

Although many believe that the complex challenges facing us today cannot be solved through the lens of the American founder's virtues, Murray writes:

I take another view: The founders were right. The success of America depended on virtue in the people when the country began and it still does in the twenty-first century. America will remain exceptional only to the extent that its people embody the same qualities that made it work for the first two centuries of its existence. The founding virtues are central to that that kind of citizenry.

Murray found that people with satisfying work; a happy marriage; a high social trust community; and a strong religious foundation are more likely to be happy than people without these four attributes. Of the four, in fact, a happy marriage is the factor that generates the biggest improvement in someone's happiness score. I can speak on marriage and happiness both personally, experiencing first-hand the changes in happiness when Laurie and I improved our own marriage, and professionally, witnessing many couples improve their marriage and subsequently, their happiness over the years.

Coming Apart reveals that only 10% of respondents who are unmarried, unhappy in jobs, profess no religion, and have low social trust describe themselves as genuinely happy. When a good job is added, the number of respondents stating they were happy increased to 20%. A happy marriage, however, jumped the total to 60% sharing they were happy. The final two attributes - high social trust communities and strong religious faith increased the respondents scores an additional 10% each. Thus, from a baseline of 10% of respondents being happy, over 80% of the people who had all four attributes stated they were sincerely happy. That's an eight times improvement! This is a significant increase and enough to make even the most skeptical of people pause and ponder.

If America desires to restore its degenerating culture, Murray has just provided the blueprint. Hopefully, it isn't too late. ...more

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Mar 26, 2017 L.A. Starks rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 07, 2012 Lawrence Lihosit rated it did not like it

While reading Charles Murray’s new book, I thought about our recent national obsession with civil discourse and events in Oakland, California. Since it never snows in Oakland, Occupy Wall Street has been very visible there. It would have been most illustrative to seat Mr. Murray at a cloth covered table, set on a high platform overlooking the street below. A finely dressed and polite moderator could have introduced him while the author poured himself a glass of water from an imported bottle.

“Cha While reading Charles Murray’s new book, I thought about our recent national obsession with civil discourse and events in Oakland, California. Since it never snows in Oakland, Occupy Wall Street has been very visible there. It would have been most illustrative to seat Mr. Murray at a cloth covered table, set on a high platform overlooking the street below. A finely dressed and polite moderator could have introduced him while the author poured himself a glass of water from an imported bottle.

“Charles Murray is an American libertarian, author and PhD invited here to explain that you do not have jobs because you are fat, lazy and dishonest sons and daughters of bitches.”

Murray cloaks these terms in ten dollar words and phrases but they represent his conclusions for the disappearance of the American working class. Forget the war on unions, the use of technology to cull the workforce in the name of efficiency and a tax system that rewarded giant companies for relocating overseas. Forget our Congress, filled with men (and women) who spend more time at tanning spas and hairdressers than they do actually writing laws. Forget our court system that has decreed a corporation a person except with more rights and a President who emptied the national cash register for bankers but never even proposed banking reform. It is all our fault. Shame on us!

This 407 page book is chock-full of cherry-picked statistics and unenlightening footnotes. The author has interesting conclusions. For instance, he ignores all historical comparisons of the American Standard of Living and concludes that “The poor didn’t really get poorer…Real family income for families in the middle was flat.” (p 50) When discussing the long hours (without overtime) that Americans now work, he concludes that we “live in a world where work has more of the characteristics of fun than ever before.” (p 43) Best of all, when he compares the working world of today to that of a half century ago, he concludes that “the world is usually the same.” (p 44) This sounds like an English Lord describing Serfdom. I was surprised that he did not propose a debtor’s prison.

Instead of cruising books and websites, the author could have offered much more had he simply bought used clothing at a flea market and tried to find a job with an extremely meager budget (like most of us). Hopefully, he would have found a real job–maybe as a Wal-Mart greeter since he is the right age. He would have discovered that his conclusions are as fictitious as a Disney cartoon which is possibly why his book was published by Crown Forum, the publisher of A Crown Imperiled: Book Two of the Chaoswar Saga and The Church of Liberalism Godless and not published by either of his alma maters: Harvard and M.I.T.

When analyzing the rich and powerful, Murray can be critical. He notes that “Washington is in a new Gilded Age…that dwarfs anything that has come before.” (p 294) He’s a libertarian so rules are bad and a spontaneous “awakening” is invoked. Didn’t Ronald Reagan imply something similar? Empathy and compassion are the children of sacrifice. Just as Reagan had Voodoo economics, Murray offers us Voodoo social theory. He bemoans a lack of social responsibility among our wealthy but completely ignores history. Our system is based upon greed and unbridled, it is nobody’s friend. The Gilded Age gave birth to reform which is exactly our hope for this era.

This is a great example of how anyone with the right connections can get a book of nonsense published commercially. It is also a great example of how the Peace Corps experience does not necessarily spawn kindness, patience and wisdom. The experience can also produce acid-tongued know-it-alls.

Years ago after a night of mischief, my buddies and I often went to the local midnight movie theater showings. While smoking Mary Jane, we giggled at experimental films and old cartoons. So, Lorenzo sez five stars for Coming Apart. Buy it, toke-up, read and laugh until it hurts. The next day, crawl on your knees in penance to the nearest libertarian and beg forgiveness. Offer to propose a debtor’s prison. It worked for Charles Dickens’ father, right?

Lawrence F. Lihosit is the author of various books including essays, short stories, poetry, history, memoirs and travel narratives. His latest book, Peace Corps Experience: Write and Publish Your Memoir will be published in April. He is not nor ever has been a libertarian.

...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Todd N rated it really liked it

Shelves: america-in-decline

Baratunde Thurston, the author of How To Be Black, astutely pointed out that you have to hand it to Charles Murray for coming out with a book about white people during Black History Month. (Oh wait. I just checked on Amazon and the publication date is actually January 31. But still, I would be willing to bet that the possibility never crossed Mr. Murray's mind.)

This book was about what I expected: A premise that I was willing to accept, a bunch of stats that I found fascinating, and conclusions ...more

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May 11, 2012 Daniel (Attack of the Books!) Burton rated it really liked it

Shelves: need-to-know, history, us-history, political

I have friends who remind me, regularly, that wealth is becoming more and more concentrated among the wealthy. Further, the "not rich" are making less than they used to, relative to the wealthy. In other words, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

There is a divide growing in America, argues Charles Murray in his book "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 - 2010" but it isn't necessarily just over money. In fact, the divide may be greater because it is cultural, I have friends who remind me, regularly, that wealth is becoming more and more concentrated among the wealthy. Further, the "not rich" are making less than they used to, relative to the wealthy. In other words, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

There is a divide growing in America, argues Charles Murray in his book "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 - 2010" but it isn't necessarily just over money. In fact, the divide may be greater because it is cultural, not just economic.

Displaying a dizzying array of statistics, studies, and research, Murray shows an America that is watching the rise of what seems, to me, to be a new ruling class, a group of elites that are well educated ("overeducated elitist snobs"), well connected, and with a set of values and interests different from much of modern America. The self-segregation is not malicious, but, largely a result of people being attracted to others like them. As a result, their children grow up with a different set of values, more educated, and in turn marry people like them, further segregating themselves.

It works both ways, though, and Murray sets up as a comparison a hypothetical city on the upper ("Belmont") and on the lower ("Fishtown") ends of the spectrum to compare them. In his analysis, people in Belmont are better educated, less likely to get divorced (if at all), more involved in their community, work longer hours, are more honest, and are more religious. On the other hand, vital statistics in all of these areas for Fishmont show a gradual falling off over the last fifty years.

Why is this problematic? One reason is that it has resulted in a culture for the upper class that is completely out of touch with most of America. They watch different movies, participate in different social activities, drink different beers, and read different books. Their interests are not the same, and yet they are a select group that sets policy and opinion, controls wealth and power, for America.

Another problem is that the degradation of values in lower class America over the last fifty years is leading to a collapse of "American civic life," something exceptional about America. At this juncture in the book, Murray, a confessed libertarian, recaps the roots and history of American civic culture and its uniqueness in the world. Neighborliness, vibrant civic engagement in solving local problems, voluntary associations, and so on. All hallmarks of America up to as recently as the 1960s, the members of lower and upper classes shared through these civic association a culture together that connected them and their values.

Further, although the elite retain some values, they have failed to lead. The elite class is as "dysfunctional in its way as the new lower class is in its way. Personally and as families, its members are successful. But they have abdictated their responsibility to set and promulgate standards." Instead, its most successful members take advantage of the perks of position without regards to the "unseemliness" of that behavior, showing something of a new "gilded age."

Prognosis? "If the case I have just made for a hollow elite is completely correct, all is lost," says Murray on page 294. The lower class is only barely able to care for itself by 2020, while the upper classes enter yet another generation separate from main stream America and further out of touch with the "real world." Insightfully, then, Murray says that "new laws and regulations steadily accrete, and America's governing regime is soon indistinguishable from that of an advanced European welfare state. The American project is dead."

Is all lost? Murray says that for things to turn around, America must see four predictions borne out: America must watch what happens in Europe (and if the turmoil of the last few months is any indication, this prediction is bearing out), science must undermine the moral underpinnings of the welfare state, it will become increasingly obvious that there is a simple, affordable way to replace the entire apparatus of the welfare state, and Americans' allegiance to the American project must be far greater that Murray's argument has acknowledged.

Could these be born out? Time will tell. In the meantime, it's a powerful argument for a retrospection of the great problems of our times and our country.
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Jan 04, 2013 John Harder rated it really liked it

First an explanation of the title – Coming Apart, The State of White America, 1960-2010. Mr. Murray does not want the distraction of bringing race into the equation when evaluating the state of American society. Murray contends that Americans are becoming split between two distinct societies based upon class, or more precisely, the cognitive elite and, well, the less cognitive. Race is not the problem and there is no significant difference between the races in the bifurcation of society – class ...more

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Apr 24, 2012 Ron Davison rated it it was amazing

Murray has written a book that deserves serious attention. He calls himself a libertarian but what Murray has done is articulate Santorum's campaign better than Santorum did. (At this point it's probably worth mentioning that I'm a liberal and thought that a Santorum presidency would be a major step back into medieval times.)
Murray deals with class in this book - a topic that seemingly became forbidden once communism lost to capitalism. But what he talks to (roughly 2/3 of children born to the w ...more

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Feb 16, 2012 Sean Chick rated it did not like it

You mean the decline of America has to do with government? That thing that socially speaking has been shrinking since 1980? I also love the part where the wealthy are virtuous and the poor whites are now slobs. Of course like most conservatives he believes in a rigid kind of inequality. It is ultimately what connects Filmer and Burke to Hitler and Gingrich. There are those born to rule and those born to serve. The conservative debate is always over who the rulers really are. Here our masters wil ...more

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Feb 05, 2013 Simcha Wood rated it really liked it

Though this reader cannot quite place Charles Murray's Coming Apart into that category of unfortunately rare books that should be read whether or not one ultimately accepts the premises and conclusions laid out in the book, it does fall into the still unusual category of books that are worth reading even if one ultimately finds disagreement with the book's central ideas and arguments.

Part of Murray's central thesis - that American culture is dividing into increasingly segregated spheres, one sph Though this reader cannot quite place Charles Murray's Coming Apart into that category of unfortunately rare books that should be read whether or not one ultimately accepts the premises and conclusions laid out in the book, it does fall into the still unusual category of books that are worth reading even if one ultimately finds disagreement with the book's central ideas and arguments.

Part of Murray's central thesis - that American culture is dividing into increasingly segregated spheres, one sphere constituting an elite "creative" class that shapes public policy and contributes and acts as gatekeepers for much of what is defined as American culture, and another sphere constituting a poorly educated, poorly employed, socially and civically unengaged underclass - will not come as news to many. For years now, it has been apparent to many that the new information society is providing numerous benefits to those with the necessary education and intelligence while leaving behind those who do not have the skills or social connections necessary to succeed in the changing economy.

Murray's thesis goes beyond this, however, to argue that these changes have also resulted in an elite class which has not only reaped the benefits of the information society but which has used these benefits to increasingly isolate itself from the rest of America. The end result is that those who shape our laws and public policies, and those who provide us with our arts and entertainment (often presented as reflections of who we all supposedly are), are increasingly oblivious to how much of America lives or to the repurcussions that political, cultural, and life-style decisions made by the elite class have on the rest of America, and particularly on those who are now becoming increasingly segregated in their own underclass.

The subtitle of Murray's book is The State of White America, 1960-2010, and while this at first seems like a somewhat odd and narrow window through which to view American culture, it does help emphasize one of Murray's points which is that, going forward, some of the most troubling lines of schism in American culture are not going to be along the lines of race or ethnicity, but along the lines of class. Even if one suspects that Murray is perhaps a little too facile in disengaging any discussion of race and ethnicity from the discussion of class, one may still find his argument for this growing class schism to be rather compelling.

Murray offers plenty of statistical evidence to back up his assertion that the social virtues of marriage, industriousness, honesty, and religiosity are more widely practiced among the elite class than among the underclass. The end result of this, Murray argues, is an underclass in which children are increasingly raised in single-parent homes, the work ethic is disdained, trust of one's neighbors is diminished or entirely absent, and little or no sense of social and civic engagement remains, all leading to unhappy people in dysfunctional communities.

Unfortunately, Murray does not answer two of the most compelling questions that these arguments raise: How did this divide of American culture and the deterioration of the underclass come about? And, what can be done to alleviate both the growing schism between the "best" and the "rest" and the resulting social collapse of the underclass?

One suspects that Murray's answer to the first question - something which he addresses explicitly in some of his other writings and which he hints at here and there in Coming Apart - is that the modern welfare state is largely to blame. But, while Murray has made some compelling arguments about the unintended detrimental affects of the modern welfare state elsewhere, given the focus of this book, one would like to see evidence that his implied culprit is indeed the perpetrator rather than, just to grab one obvious possible suspect out of the air, the rise of the information society itself and the social changes it has brought about which are necessarily going to be harder on those at the lower end of the economic spectrum who were already vulnerable and perhaps less able to absorb sweeping societal changes.

Still, even if the reader does not accept some or all of the assumptions that underlie this book, she may still find much here to ponder and worry over. Whatever its flaws, this is not a book that one dismisses lightly. ...more

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Feb 15, 2012 Heidi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Upon hearing about this book on NPR, I thought it would be much more a study about the growing class divisions... and it is, but that's not it's central theme. Libertarian Charles Murray begins with the premise that the United States was designed as a limited government democracy in which most of the day-to-day work of society is organized, managed, and overseen at a local level. This local civic involvement has always been fueled by a few core values: integrity, industriousness, marriage, and r Upon hearing about this book on NPR, I thought it would be much more a study about the growing class divisions... and it is, but that's not it's central theme. Libertarian Charles Murray begins with the premise that the United States was designed as a limited government democracy in which most of the day-to-day work of society is organized, managed, and overseen at a local level. This local civic involvement has always been fueled by a few core values: integrity, industriousness, marriage, and religiosity. (These values may, at first glance, make a liberal reader like me cringe because they seem to tread awfully close to the "family values" platform of social conservative-cum-fascist politicians, but Murray provides historical examples that clarify that he's not talking about people's private sexual behavior, but the benefits that these social institutions confer upon society.)

Murray's analysis slogs through reams of data (and yes, sometimes it is a slogging read) to show how these core values have remained more or less static among the white upper class over the last fifty years, but have seriously eroded among the growing lower classes. People in crime-riddled poor neighborhoods don't trust each other (integrity). Marriage rates are falling, especially among the working and lower-middle classes, leading to poorer outcomes for children of single parents (marriage). Fewer working and lower-middle class men are working full time, or even working at all, despite a booming economy in the 80s-90s (Murray's data controls for the increased unemployment rate caused by the 2008 recession)(industriousness). And religious observance is on the decline, as anyone who pays attention to shrinking church congregations can readily tell you (religiosity).

Why does this matter? Because in a limited government such as ours, if things don't happen on a local level, they don't happen. -And all of these historical core values are the reason that people get involved in their communities and get stuff done. Maybe most of us don't care that people aren't getting married or going to church anymore, but Murray's data shows us that the downward spiral doesn't stop there. People aren't joining unions or the PTA anymore, either. They're not getting involved in local politics or civic organizations such as the Elks or the Odd Fellows. Volunteerism and philanthropy are way down. Most of them are not even showing up to vote, that most basic responsibility of democratic citizenry. Instead, they're withdrawing from society, from democracy, into the isolation of their own homes, where they watch more hours of television per week than most people devote to paid employment.

Murray doesn't tell us how to fix it. He's not advocating a redistribution of wealth or government policies aimed at encouraging marriage and "traditional" family values. Instead, his role is that of the canary in the coal mine: to provide starkly irrefutable proof that we're all in danger, and it may or may not be too late to do anything about it. ...more

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Sep 22, 2012 Dane rated it it was amazing

This is an incredibly well written book that advances a number of claims in sociology, among them:

1) Racial comparisons are losing their validity as benchmarks of social progress (i.e. comparing black poverty rates to white poverty rates)
2) American cultural norms have changed significantly since 1960, particularly in regards to four areas: attitudes towards marriage, work, honesty, and community engagement.
3) Upper class Americans are becoming physically and culturally isolated from mainstre ...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Richard rated it it was ok

Recommended to Richard by: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/opi...

Shelves: nonfiction, economics, social-political, awaiting-big-review

David Brooks, the New York Times pet almost-a-conservative, claims about this book, “I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s Coming Apart.” Yeah, it looks seminal. See his review at The Great Divorce (I’m a little curious about whether there’s some hidden linkage to the C.S. Lewis book).

At least, at a mere 416 pages, it won’t take nearly as long to read as 2011’s most important book.
❦
Update:

Brooks is an editorialist; s ...more

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Feb 27, 2012 Christie rated it liked it

I figured few people I knew would even bother to read this book, so I did so myself. It seems like many of the complaints fail to take the book as what it claims to be. Murray purports to show the factual trends in various measures over time - and I think he does that fairly well. There might be a few other variables here and there one would like to also see controlled, but the statistics seem to be honestly presented. What appears to be most irksome to many is Murray's interpretation of the dat ...more

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Feb 05, 2012 Ray rated it it was amazing

Once upon a time was Middletown (Lynds). Now there is Murray's Coming Apart. It has extensive statistical and graphical elaboration of his premise. Murray's premise that increasing class separation of United States into an upper class and a lower class with unique responses to the unifying forces of our "exceptionalism" threaten that exceptionalism. If that uniqueness weakens and disappears the consequences will be destructive of the elements of the good life that have been and, though weakening ...more

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Jun 17, 2012 Eva rated it really liked it

The first half of this book was amazing. The second half was meh--lots of abstract commentary and theorizing that didn't appeal to me. Some kindle notes:

food, a few Italian restaurants serving spaghetti and pizza, and a few restaurants with a French name, which probably meant that they had French onion soup on the menu. But if you were looking for a nice little Szechuan dish or linguine with pesto or sautéed fois gras, forget it. A Thai curry? The first Thai restaurant in the entire nation woul ...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Bojan Tunguz rated it it was amazing

Charles Murray is one of the most distinguished and insightful social scientists of our time. His work over the past few decades has systematically and methodically probed into some of the most consequential and momentous societal and policy issues. Unfortunately, due to the highly politicized and contentious nature of many of such topics, he and his work have been subject to some very severe and withering criticism over the years. It's a testament to Murray's courage, integrity, and intellectua Charles Murray is one of the most distinguished and insightful social scientists of our time. His work over the past few decades has systematically and methodically probed into some of the most consequential and momentous societal and policy issues. Unfortunately, due to the highly politicized and contentious nature of many of such topics, he and his work have been subject to some very severe and withering criticism over the years. It's a testament to Murray's courage, integrity, and intellectual honesty that he stuck to his guns and pursued his research and intellectual interest, often paying a pretty high price in his professional career.

"Coming Apart" is intended as Murray's valedictory. It's a book that crowns his professional career, recapitulates certain points and topics that have long been at the center of his interest, and offers his views of what the future may hold - both for the society and for the research into these issues. It is also a sequel of sorts to "Losing Ground", Murray's seminal 1980s book that explored the consequences (intended and unintended) of various welfare policies between the 1960s and 1980s. That book has pretty much launched Murray's career as a public intellectual, making his influence well beyond the academic and scholarly circles. "Coming Apart" explores the consequences of those same policies over the period of another thirty years of their implementation, ending roughly around the year 2010.

The first two parts of the book are primarily scholarly and descriptive. Here Murray lays down the facts in a very straightforward and informative way. He has always been incredibly adroit at presenting even the most arcane social science data in a way that makes them seem almost effortlessly intuitive. Using all the statistical and methodological tools that are at his disposal, Murray paints a very grim picture of the drastic divergence of the classes in American society. In order to avoid the false impression that the class division is in fact the racial division, Murray concentrates primarily on the divergence of the "white" classes in America. At a later point in the book he actually includes the figures for other ethnic group, but only to make the overarching point that the class divergence has very little to do with the racial and ethnic factors. Murray concentrates primarily on cultural and sociological measures in which the classes have grown apart, such as out-of-wedlock births, religious attendance, etc. One of the more interesting pieces of insight in this book was that, aside from the few large metropolitan areas (New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco), the elite neighborhoods are in fact very evenly split along the cultural and political lines.

The last part of the book is largely discursive and polemical in nature. Here Murray tries to give his own interpretation of the social forces that have driven America apart over the course of the past half a century. His overwhelming message is that America needs to go back to instilling its "founding virtues" in order return to the kinds of social cohesion and solidarity that was prevalent until the 1960s. (He indirectly blames LBJ for the start of the decline, although he never spells this outright.) The four virtues that he has in mind in particular are industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity. I particularly give him credit for including the latter two, especially considering that most libertarians have largely avoided (at best) promoting them. This is one of the main reasons why I have long held Murray in the highest esteem when it comes to discussing policy and social issues.

The founding virtues have in fact never gone out of fashion, and are significantly much more likely to be practiced by the wealthy educated elites than they are by the rest of the society, particularly those in the "underclass." This is very unfortunate, as these virtues are exactly what had enabled many of those in elite circles to obtain their high status. For this state of affairs Murray blames in large part the cultural norms of "inclusivity" and "acceptance," where it has become unfashionable to think that certain cultural norms and behaviors are, in fact, better in every meaningful sense. In Murray's words, it is high time for the elites to start preaching what they practice.

Even though this book is filled with a lot of sobering and depressing statistics, the saddest part for me was in the acknowledgment section. Murray refrained from mentioning ANY of the social scientists that he had consulted while researching and writing this book, because this could prove extremely harmful to their academic careers. It is a really sad that someone who I consider the foremost intellectual giant of our time has to be treated as toxic in the highest intellectual circles. It further highlights how much more someone of far lesser stature must be thought of as unpalatable by the same academics.

This is an outstanding, magnificent work that ought to be read by anyone interested in public policy and the cultural forces that are driving Americans away from each other. ...more

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May 15, 2012 Sean B. rated it liked it

So apparently the author of this book took a lot of flak once upon a time because he said things that people didn't like, that conflicted with a lot of stubbornly set and rigidly defined descriptions of "HOW LIFE WORKS".
I don't know, maybe look at things that you disagree with with an open mind, people. After all, facts are facts; they cannot change because you don't like them (but you can change your interpretation of what they mean).
This book has an interesting story to tell, and a lot of stat So apparently the author of this book took a lot of flak once upon a time because he said things that people didn't like, that conflicted with a lot of stubbornly set and rigidly defined descriptions of "HOW LIFE WORKS".
I don't know, maybe look at things that you disagree with with an open mind, people. After all, facts are facts; they cannot change because you don't like them (but you can change your interpretation of what they mean).
This book has an interesting story to tell, and a lot of statistics to back it up. I would say that what the author is warning about is probably true, but I haven't been around long enough to notice general societal trends. Perhpas one day, when I'm older, I'll say grumpy things about how life used to be.
The main point of the book is that American civic culture is dying out, especially among the lower class (who represent a vast section of American life). This civic culture is what made America a unique and successful nation, and without it it will fall from the inherent virtue of our national spirit into a ruin of corruption and lost values, a graveyard of idealism. I cannot help but see that this viewpoint is shared by a lot of people - the whole 'good old days' thing that I just mocked in the paragraph above - but then, presented with the information in this book, as well as the information gained from my brief glimpses of national media and much recent experience with people of the lower class in a town that the author would probably lament, I can say, again, that American culture is definitely moving towards a new paradigm, one very far away from the values that were upheld by the people who created this nation. Certainly there is less civic participation, and it also seems that crime is being viewed less and less as something really bad, at least by certain segments of our population (this includes both white collar and blue collar groups, by the way).
And, on the whole, is that a bad thing or a good thing? What 'founding virtues' are good and worth preserving, and what ones shall we rightfully discard? Is the direction our nation is taking a bad thing? I don't presume to know, and I certainly won't go into that with this review. But if anyone reads this, feel free to think about it. ...more

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Apr 02, 2017 Rebecca rated it did not like it

Charles Murray has been at the center of some backlash on college campuses recently, and as some of his supporters noted, many of his critics haven't read anything he wrote. So, in that spirit, I tried to see for myself what he is about (although, his most controversial/loathed book is not this but the Bell Curve). I did not expect to like this book based on what I knew, but tried to keep an open mind. I was not impressed. On its face, his argument that white elites and working class whites are ...more

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Feb 20, 2012 thewanderingjew rated it liked it

In the early part of the decade of the sixties, hope abounded, the class distinctions were small, poverty had decreased steadily, the moral code was totally different, promiscuity was frowned upon, the sanctity of marriage was primary, honesty was a virtue to be extolled, hard work was honored. Gratuitous sex in books, TV and movies was forbidden or frowned upon. TV was wholesome as in Father Knows Best. The best movies were clean; they were about our way of life and our lives were wholesome. We In the early part of the decade of the sixties, hope abounded, the class distinctions were small, poverty had decreased steadily, the moral code was totally different, promiscuity was frowned upon, the sanctity of marriage was primary, honesty was a virtue to be extolled, hard work was honored. Gratuitous sex in books, TV and movies was forbidden or frowned upon. TV was wholesome as in Father Knows Best. The best movies were clean; they were about our way of life and our lives were wholesome. We identified with certain virtues and values. Most people believed in some sort of religious affiliation even though they weren't religious. They associated with others: in organizations, at church, with neighbors. Social capital was at a high. Women raised their own children and stayed home to nurture hearth and home. Marriage was sought after in and of itself for a person's happy and successful future. If the couple did not marry, children born out of wedlock were given up for adoption. Abortion was uncommon and illegal. Divorce was rare. People worked hard and were proud of their effort. Honesty was a prized value and crime was at a low. Differences in class did not differentiate these statistics. Across class lines there was less crime. We left our doors open. We were unafraid. Crime did not pay. Drugs were a non issue, but smoking and alcohol were rampant. People got along. They had boundaries and discipline. They followed rules of behavior.

Charles Murray’s book exposes the decline of adherence to the four virtues of the Founding Fathers, industry, faith, honesty and marriage. He does not attempt to explain why it happened or how to fix it. He merely exposes the decline of the American Project as we march lock step toward the welfare state of the European Dream, which is failing in Europe. He contends that it isn’t divergence in class that has harmed us and changed our values, but rather a divergence in values and behavior. Today, anything goes. We do not judge anyone and we do not have any expectations. We do not lead by example, but rather by apathy. We have lost our sense of community.

The civil rights movement, the woman’s rights movement, Woodstock, and the Beatles, among others, came to the forefront in the mid sixties. Suddenly, the face of America changed. In this book, the date of change is placed at November 21, 1963, the day before Kennedy's assassination. Charles Murray examines the decline of values taking place in America using a sample which, for the most part, only includes the white population, ages 30-49. Using the fictional towns of Fishtown and Belmont, representing the lower and upper class of society, Murray attempts to show how the gap between the classes has widened. In the sixties, we all shared similar values, even though we were separated by economy and education. The fictional towns of Fishtown and Belmont also shared the same values, had low crime rates, high marriage rates, worked hard and were tied to their faith. Our communities were diverse and heterogeneous.

Today, the upper class lives in a super zip, in a bubble, isolated from the population of the fictional town of Fishtown. Murray compares the people, their desires, their values, their work ethic and their faith, among other things, and attempts to track the changes that have taken place, causing the huge divide between the upper and lower classes, as the upper class in super zip codes, stays in a homogenous group, in a bubble, and remain isolated from anyone unlike themselves.

Murray raises the issue of the upper class becoming over-educated snobs. We are forced to examine that idea. Americans used to believe charity was shameful, they believed in self reliance. Promiscuity was frowned upon. There was a time when parents gave the teachers the benefit of the doubt, they expected their children to adhere to rules. Today, they give the children the edge and criticize the authority meant to teach them. Upper and lower classes no longer meet at the PTA, in organizations or in church, and the values of both have diverged completely. Hard work has reached excessive levels in the upper class and levels of bottom feeders in the lower. There is no sense of honor for someone who works hard in Fishtown, but rather the goal is to work the system and get the most from the government, for the least amount of effort expended, so that they can simply get by and lead the most pleasant life available. The lack of a strong foundation for marriage in that community means that there is also a lack of responsibility toward the children arising out of the non-marital unions. Crime has risen in Fishtown but remains pretty much absent from Belmont.

Social capital has all but disappeared. The government is supposed to provide for the things that responsible adults used to provide, by way of their organizations and participation in volunteer work or by being good neighbors. In the upper class, there is still a strong devotion to the virtues of marriage, industry and honesty. In the lower class, the devotion has waned to low levels.

Charles has devised a short questionnaire which attempts to illuminate the difference between growing up in the decades prior to the 60's and growing up today.

Can America survive without regaining values? This book attempts to tell you what has happened over the last six decades; it is up to the reader to try and figure out if it is a good thing, a bad thing, or even something that we can do anything about.

Can America come back or will we keep marching toward the European way and ultimate failure? ...more

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Apr 21, 2012 Paola rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2012, sociology-social-anthropology

This book analyses class in the US from 1960s onwards. It consists of three parts: one dealing with the new elite classe, one with the new lower class, and the third part drawing some kind of conclusion.
In a nutshell, the core thesis is that a new elite class which is isolated from "mainstream" America, while at the same time a new lower class has emerged in which the core values of industriousness, centrality of marraige, religiousity and honesty have been ditched. According to Murray, the prob This book analyses class in the US from 1960s onwards. It consists of three parts: one dealing with the new elite classe, one with the new lower class, and the third part drawing some kind of conclusion.
In a nutshell, the core thesis is that a new elite class which is isolated from "mainstream" America, while at the same time a new lower class has emerged in which the core values of industriousness, centrality of marraige, religiousity and honesty have been ditched. According to Murray, the problem is that:

The new upper class still does a good job of practicing some of the virtues, but it no longer preaches them. It has lost self-confidence in the rightness of its own customs and values, and preaches nonjudgmentalism instead.
...
Personally and as families, its members are successful. But they have abdicated their responsibility to set and promulgate standards.

It is the first book by Murray that I read, and I think it is a very good read. The style is engaging, and it is packed with factual information.

I think readers of any political persuasion can safely sail through the first two parts - the last one is the more political, but in fairness to the author he makes his position clear at the outset:

Data can bear on policy issues, but many of our opinions about policy are grounded in premises about the nature of human life and human society that are beyond the reach of data. Try to think of any new data that would change your position on abortion, the death penalty, legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage, or the inheritance tax. If you cannot, you are not necessarily being unreasonable.

So it has been with the evidence I have presented. A social democrat may see in parts 1 and 2 a compelling case for the redistribution of wealth. A social conservative may see a compelling case for government policies that support marriage, religion, and traditional values. I am a libertarian, and see a compelling case for returning to the founders’ conception of limited government.
In the concluding chapter, I try to explain why I see the facts in this light.

Although the exposition appears to at least try to be objective, it does not always manage to: for instance, as a European I feel his description of what he calls "the Europe Syndrome" are exaggerated. Also, many people (me included) will disagree with large parts of his analysis, and a feeling of nostalgia for the good old days pervades the exposition - still, a very stimulating book even for people whose position in the political spectrum is quite far from that of the author.
...more

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Jan 01, 2017 Sanjay Varma rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction

He describes an America that is separating into two societies based on economic and educational class. His hypothesis (instead of "insight") is that uneducated poor whites have experienced stark declines in church attendance and employment, and steep increases in incarceration and out-of-wedlock pregnancies. The book had a pleasing and logical quality as I read it, but it left a bad taste afterwards when I asked myself: How did he prove his point? What was the author's point? I didn't like the a He describes an America that is separating into two societies based on economic and educational class. His hypothesis (instead of "insight") is that uneducated poor whites have experienced stark declines in church attendance and employment, and steep increases in incarceration and out-of-wedlock pregnancies. The book had a pleasing and logical quality as I read it, but it left a bad taste afterwards when I asked myself: How did he prove his point? What was the author's point? I didn't like the answer to either question.

"Coming Apart" presents itself as one of the new data-oriented books full of new insights from mining big data. But this is merely a disguise, In fact the book is the oldest kind of persuasive argument that uses every trick, some dishonest, to make its point. First of all, he uses only data that had been pre-selected by two other conservative authors when they wrote their books. Next, the author scrubs the data to organize it into "whites" and "all races" categories." Why? Just as one might adjust financial data to 1960 dollars, for ease of comparison, the author adjusts all sociological data to describe only white people, to guide the reader to imagine a sort of 1950's era when you can believe everyone was white. I personally find it hard to give credibility to an author who organizes his data in such intrusive ways for so little gain. This book would have been much better if he had truly embraced data science to identify new insights, instead is merely confirming his conservative philosophy. Modern data science is best exemplified by "Freakonomics" which followed a core principle that the data provides the insights. You don't go in with a hypothesis and then prove or disprove it. You go in with an open mind and look for hidden causes and connections.

As for why he write the book, the author is trying to prove his preconceived beliefs that poor people are suffering because they are lazy and immoral. The "whites" versus "all" segmentation of data is a typical juvenile Republican behavior to be needlessly provocative. ...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Sally rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

This book is about the division in our country between the upper and lower class and their core behaviors and values. It deserves five stars, but I found the beginning chapters' statistics and charts hard to comprehend. I'm not a very smart bear, so I need succinct statements rather than "Specifically, the average centile for people living in the zip codes bordering the SuperZips was at least 90 for 48 percent of them and 80 to 89 for another 30 percent." He goes on like that for quite a while; This book is about the division in our country between the upper and lower class and their core behaviors and values. It deserves five stars, but I found the beginning chapters' statistics and charts hard to comprehend. I'm not a very smart bear, so I need succinct statements rather than "Specifically, the average centile for people living in the zip codes bordering the SuperZips was at least 90 for 48 percent of them and 80 to 89 for another 30 percent." He goes on like that for quite a while; meanwhile, I'm looking for those all-important Topic Sentences in each paragraph! :)

However, when he got to Part II, "Why It Matters", I got really interested in and excited about what he was saying. "America's creative minority has degenerated into a dominant minority, and we are witnessing the universal next step, the proletarianization of the dominant minority." His example: tattoos are now chic, something that I keep shaking my head about. He talks about the problem of government taking over so much of people's lives and essentially managing their lives for them: "Taking the trouble out of life strips people of major ways in which human beings look back on their lives and say, 'I made a difference.'" And this sad statement: "The simpler explanation is that white males of the 2000s were less industrious than they had been twenty, thirty, or fifty years ago..." Murray isn't picking on the lower class; he's also pointing a finger at the out-of-touch upper class who isolates itself with its own kind and proposes 'help' that really is no help at all. People have abdicated responsibility and hard work in favor of an easier life, and who can blame them? It is so seductive to have someone take care of you. But in the end it sucks away your pride and integrity, and the negative effects aren't limited to you, but spread to the community you live in and to the country you live in. We all need to take a good hard look at where we are--it is way past 'where we're headed'--and hope this isn't the end for our country. ...more

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May 18, 2017 Judi rated it did not like it

Shelves: recorded-books, non-fiction, history, politics

Noooooo! Three CD's in I want to pitch the "book" out the window. Stereotyping folks by education and zip codes, then describes the specific tastes, interests of each stereotype and who they despise. For me that concept is not relevant. To give the dude the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he isn't in touch with the diversity of Los Angeles. My experience being born and raised in LA is completely different. It is, and has been, in the decades he writes about a virtual gumbo, stew, soup of diversity ...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Andrea rated it really liked it

Shelves: current-events

This book describes in detail the state of American families at the turn of the current century. There is a big divide between rich and poor and their families are worlds apart. As a basis for the discussion and the statistics, he describes the four characteristics of the founding colonists that made America great which are thrift, religiosity, marriage and industry and how those characteristics are losing ground in American culture. He warns that the disintegration of America will affect both r ...more

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title link	preview: Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010
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