There’s an epidemic out there. Poor
kids these days don’t have a chance, and it’s getting worse.
Robert Putnam, with the help of an
uncredited assistant (on the cover, at least), gathered storied of young adults
and melded those stories of haves and have-nots with larger statistical trends
to tell the story of how the educated class is ,moving away from the uneducated
class. There are copious charts and graphs.
I really wanted to like this, since
it covers a lot of the same ground as the recent Charles Muarry Book “Coming
Apart,” and for ideological reasons I don’t want to read Muarry. The problem is
that there’s no hook. The kid’s stories should be what grips you and pulls you
into the text, but it doesn’t work. I think there’s too many so I can’t fully
live their stories, or perhaps Putnam and company are better analytical
thinkers than storytellers for generating pathos. Whatever it was, I was
unengaged. It was good enough to finish, but it did not compel me to write
marginalia. If you have to read this for a class, it will be readable but it
might not pull you in if it is leisure time reading.
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