An intelligent, thorough synthesis of how the rights and responsibilities of American citizenship have evolved from colonial times to the present. Schudson (Sociology/Univ.. Of Calif., San Diego) sets out first to disabuse the reader of any notions that Americans have always been expected to be informed about politics or even to care. In the 18th century, only a few propertied white males (—freeholders—) could even vote, and elections were more of a social carnival than a political arena. By the Jacksonian era, however, the —common person— had begun to assert the privileges that we have come to regard as rights. Education was more widely available, the explosion of the print media made information available to the newly literate public, and ordinary folks began enacting social change through reform associations. By the late 19th century, machine politics, though corrupt, had created the most personalized electoral system America has ever known. Voter turnout was at its highest in these years, as people eagerly debated issues and saw their friends appointed to government posts. The interwar era saw a disillusionment with democratic citizenship, but the postwar baby boomers —widened the web of citizenship— by again agitating for rights, especially for people who had been previously excluded from the political process. Schudson says that this —rights-regarding— model of citizenship is still the paradigm for contemporary political life. Overall, this is a well-written, general political history, peppered with some fresh sociological insights and useful demographics. But for a book that purports to be about the ordinary person, the research is a bit impersonal: although this is not a direct history of the media in the ways his previous books were (Discovering the News, 1978; Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion, 1984), Schudson overwhelmingly favors newspapers for his primary source material, eschewing more intimate records such as journals and letters. Sometimes overly ambitious, but its grand scale also makes Schudson’s work a valuable introductory text in American politics.
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-82729-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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