The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart | 
 enlarge | Author: Bill Bishop
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 8949
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0618689354
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.800973
EAN: 9780618689354
ASIN: 0618689354
Publication Date: May 7, 2008
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Product Description
The untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided
America may be more diverse than ever coast to coast, but the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote as we do. This social transformation didn't happed by accident. We've built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood -- and religion and news show -- most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away. The reason for this situation, and the dire implications for our country, is the subject of this groundbreaking work.
In 2004, the journalist Bill Bishop, armed with original and startling demographic data, made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into alarmingly homogeneous communities -- not by region or by red state or blue state, but by city and even neighborhood. In The Big Sort, Bishop deepens his analysis in a brilliantly reported book that makes its case from the ground up, starting with stories about how we live today and then drawing on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.
The Big Sort will draw comparisons to Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class and will redefine the way Americans think about themselves for decades to come.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
Crucial to understanding today's U.S. political environment September 8, 2008
I found this book to be full of valuable insight and data to help me understand the reasons behind the cultural division within our country that have gradually transpired over the past 30 years. It's not as simple as what many on both sides of the political aisle want us to believe; that the Republicans or conservatives are dogmatic or afraid of change. Or Democrats or liberals are wanting to tax everyone to death and move toward socialism. The reasons for the emerging division are complex and rooted in more than superficial issues. This book helps to explain the multifaceted reasons for the emerging division which will help us all to move beyond it and heal as a nation.
Prior to reading this book I believed for some time that our country is heading for more than just ideological, political and economic division. I believed that our country is heading for geographic division, as in dividing into more than one physical country. I still believe this. But at least I understand why I was feeling this way for so long. I just hope I'm wrong.
politically meaningful September 5, 2008
I'm concerned with the increasing divisions between left and right America - this book seems at least to be hitting on some of my concerns.
Provocative new thesis, well-researched and argued, rather one-sided August 18, 2008
Bill Bishop has a simple thesis. Americans have segregated themselves politically and culturally. Most of us now have the money and opportunity to move around, and a huge number of us have taken this opportunity to move to places where we are more comfortable, where there are more people like us. The result, he argues is that the country increasingly consists of enclaves, which are either overwhelmingly liberal or overwhelming conservative. This pattern, he argues, is self-reinforcing. As most areas become more monolithic politically, they grow more extreme. This drives away people of the opposite point of view, which makes each area more monolithic. And as most local elections become non-competitive, the real action is in the primary, which is dominated by party activists, who tend to be extremists. The entire dynamic is to make us all live in echo chambers, in which we hear only opinions we agree with, and in which we all become less tolerant of other points of view and more extreme in our own point of view.
The book has many virtues. First, while I have some reservations, I think there is a good deal of substance to his argument. Much of the country is growing more polarized, people are less and less tolerant of opposing viewpoints and I think Bishop has explained a great deal of why this is so. Second, Bishop does not just give his opinion. He backs what he says with an extensive statistical analysis, and a very interesting discussion of relevant social science. In short, a solid, well-argued book.
Nonetheless, I have at least two sets of reservations. First, Bishop is very careful to not discuss the issues which divide the two sides. I think this is a good strategy for him, given the kind of book he is trying to write. At the same time, however, I do not think you can really understand these issues, without considering the substance of the disagreements. Bishop often makes it seem that people are just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing. I think there is more to it than that.
Second, Bishop's analysis emphatically only applies to middle class, mostly white, Americans. He has absolutely nothing to say about immigrants, who, in my view, probably do not fit his pattern at all.
 Interesting but speculative August 17, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The authors' thesis is intriguing. U.S. counties are becoming increasingly homogenous in their lifestyle and politics. As a result, they are becoming polarized. The authors state this phenomenon is more pronounced for Republican counties. They are concerned that our society has become increasingly fragmented with close by communities having radically different sets of values. The authors partly explain this clustering into homogenous communities over the past three decades resulting in polarizing differences between them.
Their main supporting observation is that the % of voters in Presidential election from counties with a 20 percentage point differential (in either direction) in close elections has steadily increased over the past 30 years (from 26.8% in 1976 to 48.3% in 2004). They also rely on Alan Abramowitz work who observed the same phenomenon at the State level. In 1976, the average Presidential election margin in the States was 8.9 percentage points. In 2004, it was 14.8 percentage points. But, it is unclear if the latter just picked two points. That's because when you look at the standard deviation of the Democrat's % at the State level minus the nation's Democrat's % for each Presidential election over the same period, you get pretty much trendless results. If polarization had really increased, the standard deviation as defined over the period should have increased.
The authors also observed that since the 70s, Democratic counties share of the college educated and foreign-born citizens has risen. Meanwhile, Republicans gained shares of the Church going and white population. This demographic shift explains why Republican counties have become more polarized as they are more religious, less ethnically diverse, and less moderate in their views.
The authors thesis is appealing. The rise of the religious right is common knowledge. Democrats, referred to as the rainbow coalition, being more ethnically diverse is well accepted too.
But, sometimes the authors contradict themselves. On page 50 they disclose a graph showing how counties have become increasingly more polarized in their Presidential voting; and it is clearly the Democratic counties that have become more so. This contradicts their narrative analysis. So, which one is correct? Their analysis or their graph?
Other leading social scientists completely contradict their theories. The latter suggest that to the contrary the U.S. population is not so polarized. And, that it is only the politicians that have become more so. Those are the themes presented by Morris Fiorina in Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (Great Questions in Politics Series). The authors actually do agree with Fiorina about the politicians as they convey a graph on pg. 247 showing the rapid decline of moderates in Congress from near 50% of the membership (either Senate or the House) in 1950 down to 10% currently. But, Fiorina and the authors reach diametrically opposite conclusion regarding the general population. How can that be? The authors show polarization mainly at the county voting level. Fiorina instead shows moderation at the State level, as he shows that the majority of the State in the 2000 election did have less than a 10% differential between Bush and Gore (I suspect the updated edition shows the same phenomenon in 2004 between Bush and Kerry). He also conveys that people's opinions between Blue and Red States are not that different even on very controversial topics such as abortion and homosexuality. To the authors credit, they addressed Fiorina's work. But, they dismissed it too quickly. They suggest Fiorina was looking for moderation by phrasing the questions ambiguously. On abortion Fiorina asked whether people were for or against abortion in different terms of pregnancies and in different situations (health of the mother at risk, rape, confirmed malformation of fetus, etc...). Meanwhile, the authors asked simply are you for or against abortion? And they got different results. But, I think Fiorina's work is more sophisticated as it uncovered the nuances of people's values much better. Additionally, Fiorina develops a political model indicating that the Presidential candidate who gets closer to the Center on both fiscal and social dimensions typically wins the election. Karl Rove proved the opposite in 2000 and 2004 by rallying the base. Meanwhile, the authors support Karl Rove strategy and suggests that given our polarized electorate you have to rally your base first and foremost. The current election between Obama and McCain may swing the pendulum again in Fiorina's favor.
Another leading pollster who is on Fiorina's side is Mark Penn. In his interesting book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes he indicates that the % of independent voters is steadily rising. Per studies from University of Michigan, the % of split-ticket voters (people who vote for a different party for President vs Congress) has increased by 42% since 1952.
Also counties presidential voting may have become more polarized because the candidates have become more polarized not the voters. In 1976, Ford and Carter was a far less contentious match than either Bush - Gore in 2000 or Bush - Kerry in 2004.
In terms of the sorting and clustering of communities economic implications, the authors work is simplistic vs the far more sophisticated and insightful work of Richard Florida in Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.
 The Big Sort is a Big Hit July 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It may take a journalist to write an important work on politics that can be understood and enjoyed by those without a PhD in political science. This is essential reading for those who want to understand where the rubber meets the road in American politics at the grassroots level. It is a penetrating analysis that is also thoughtful, thoroughly researched and very well-written.
With that said, an editor more concerned with selling books than with the weight of objective evidence may have insisted on the subtitle, "Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart." That is because James Madison wrote in 1787, "The latent causes of factions are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society." Bill Bishop brings this up to date 221 years later by describing how the adherents of those factions have chosen to live apart by segregating themselves into separate clusters of residential neighborhoods in cities across the country. He is far less persuasive in making a case that this is somehow tearing us apart any more today than it did in the atmosphere of bitter factionalism that existed in Madison's era.
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