Reviews for Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety

The average rating for Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-01-15 00:00:00 Robert Duncan Conley sets forth to explain a cultural phenomenon in the US in which people are increasingly disconnected, despite all the advances in communications technology. At least, I thought that's what this was going to be about. Actually, it feels more like some kind of disorganized rip-off of "Freakonomics," only not as well written. Conley often attempts to make an objective statement, only to follow it with one that leans heavily left or right (making BOTH left- and right-leaning comments does not make you objective, just indecisively biased). In general, it is very disorganized and meandering, and the arguments don't seem very well argued. I feel like I can't even write this review very well because it was all so vague. But here's what I CAN single out: my main complaint is that the book is so heavily focused on the culture of the top 1% of income earners in the country. What's the value of that? Plenty of middle-class families in this country can relate to "home office, blackberry moms, and economic anxiety," so why are we reading about investment bankers living in million-dollar condos in Manhattan, with their existential angst over hiring a nanny, cleaning service, and pet sitter? The book starts out with a description of a typical suburban, middle-class family of the 50s, but it doesn't ever really describe its modern equivalent for a point of comparison, and things just fall apart from there. It doesn't even spout some kind of twaddle about how culture "trickles down," it just displays a blatant classist (and to me, very east-coast centric) bias. Secondly, I seriously doubt Conley's claims that economic anxiety (as in, fear of losing our jobs, careers, economic stability, etc.) is "all in our heads." Again, that may be true of really rich people, but those of more humble means are in proportionally worse shape when faced with job loss, largely because they also tend to carry a lot of debt (something that was barely mentioned in the section[s] about economic anxiety). Plus, the statistics he cites about average job tenure are several years old and skewed toward people nearing retirement. Today, hopping from job to job is pretty much the norm, especially for the under-35 set. This book was published in 2009, and the economic collapse is mentioned a couple of times, so there's no reason for this to be so out of date. Yet with all these things bugging me, I still finished the book. This is because when Conley isn't pretending to be Steven Levitt, his actual sociological analysis can be kind of interesting. For instance, he describes our "serial monogamy" culture (referring to divorce and second, third, etc. marriages) to be functionally equivalent to the polygamist/polyandrous cultures we tend to scorn, when you factor in alimony and child support. The chapter about crime and punishment (a different take from Levitt's on why crime rates have gone down) is also rather interesting. Unfortunately, these two chapters don't relate much to the central thesis of the book (which is still unclear to me) so I had to digest them more like separate articles than chapters in a book. All in all, I think what this book really needed was a good developmental editor. Better luck next time.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-11-26 00:00:00 Brian Dunbar Closer to 3.5 stars for an interesting social commentary. The book is almost a decade old, but it seems like we're still in the same situation.