The experience of culture Book

The only thing more disappointing than me choosing to finish this book was Ed Rosenthal's choice to write it. Or perhaps the truly bad choice was MIT Press's choice not to edit it. Whatever the lapse, this is a truly terrible book (with an admittedly great cover). Imagine the worst TED talk ever, recapped by David Brooks on a bad day, with research assistance from Malcolm Gladwell -- that's how "The Era of Choice" reads. It's all dressed up as a bold statement on our contemporary experience but it's essentially a hackneyed skimming of the last, oh, forty years of cultural criticism. The book has literally nothing new to say, and in fact badly mangles most of its sources. Worst of all is that Rosenthal doesn't even manage to say much about "choice," his proposed unified field theory of our times. He never really defines it, never supports his contention that "we" have more choice now than ever, and never explores the different choices available to different groups. It fails on its own terms, its style is rambling and maddening (lots of "as we shall sees" and "as we have seens"), and its arguments uniformly unsupported. Choose not to read it.