A thoughtful, well-researched study of a “critical foundation” of society.
A social scientist argues that we should trust that the things that bind us are greater than the things that divide us.
Despite the importance of trust in every area of our lives, we rarely think about it deeply. Kim, a professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California, has made it his life’s work, and this book examines the subject from a variety of perspectives. He notes that many societies around the world have become less trusting in the past decades, but in the U.S., distrust has reached epidemic levels. Americans have become prone to believing rumors, gossip, and accusations even when they suspect they are unfounded. Now, the default position, Kim suggests, is to think the worst of anyone outside our inner circles. The reasons appear to be connected to the emphasis that the media, including social media, place on the negative. Kim differentiates between competence distrust, where we do not believe someone is capable of doing what they say they will do; and integrity distrust, where we believe that someone is trying to mislead and damage us. Integrity distrust is the more dangerous, although it is often a matter of perception rather than reality—and this points to possible ways to rebuild trust. The offended person has to accept honest differences and be willing to forgive when no offense is intended. Kim admits that some people are simply not worth trusting, but his point is that most are, and we should be aware of the costs of forever remaining offended. Equally, the offender must be ready to make a genuine apology and make appropriate amends. This change of mindset is not easy, and Kim believes that each person must make that journey for themselves. But it is well worth the effort—and necessary if we hope to escape the distrust trap.
A thoughtful, well-researched study of a “critical foundation” of society.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781250838155
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
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Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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