Nader reflects on his childhood and youth growing up in Connecticut and the values he learned from his siblings and parents. I did not know Nader is Lebanese or that he is a first-generation American. A warm, nostalgic memoir that pays tribute to the importance of family and community. ( )

This work combines personal memoir with homespun advice, and as a result, comes off sounding preachy and self-righteous. Nader writes well, but it is difficult to believe that he is looking at his childhood as honestly as he would have us think; I can't imagine anyone being quite so perfect as his parents in this work, and the town he grew up in apparently had few if any individuals of questionable moral character. In the end, the book comes off sounding like one of those "when I was your age" tales by old Uncle Ralph who just can't understand that going back to the early 20th century might not be such a good idea. In several ways, I could have imagined this written by William Bennett - the virtues of the olden days vs. the decadence of the modern world. While I agree with the author on a number of points, his method of presentation leaves something to be desired, and his lack of ability to see the dark side of the time he is extolling is disturbing. ( )

My review from 2008:

Reading Ralph Nader’s book about the family traditions that helped shape who he is, I am reminded of Neil Postman’s powerful introduction to his final treatise on American schools, The End of Education.
“To the young, schooling seems relentless, but we know it is not. What is relentless is our education... poverty is a great educator... it mostly teaches hopelessness. But not always. Politics is also a great educator. Mostly, it teaches, I am afraid, cynicism. But not always. Television is a great educator as well. Mostly it teaches consumerism. But not always.”

That’s what Nader’s book is about: the importance of family traditions in how we educate our children. Education is a never-ending process, and it’s our daily routines, habits and customs that primarily shape the way we see the world.
But Nader is worried that traditions such as the ones cherished within his family are being squeezed out, de-prioritized perhaps, by our increasingly corporate-controlled culture.

Pg. 69 – “One day... [my father] asked a simple question: ‘What did you learn today, Ralph? Did you learn how to believe or did you learn how to think?’
“For some reason, that question was like a bolt from the blue. It has stayed with me ever since as a yardstick and a guide. In my adult life, I have thought back on it countless times: Is this new movement or politician trying to make us believe, by using abstractions and slogans or advertising gimmicks, or inviting us to think through the issues, using facts, experience, and judgment?...
“This is not to discount the importance of belief, without which, after all, we couldn’t hold to the principles and ethics that shape our daily lives. Rather, my father’s point was that we should reach our beliefs by thinking them through. In public school we received instruction, which was largely a matter of belief; it was at home that we received our real education, which had more to do with thought. There was nothing wrong with this combination: Both instruction and education were the better for it.”

And that perhaps is the key. Our society believes so strongly in the importance of economic security, that we have come to value the manufactured beliefs of advertisements over the process of independent thinking. This is true both for politics and economics. Democrats and Republicans have monopolized politics to such an extent that the views of those parties are the only ones given serious analysis any more by media. And advertising shapes how most Americans spend tens of thousands of dollars a year, making us believe we absolutely can’t live without everything from Chap Stick to the newest car.
What do most Americans learn? Most certainly still learn to believe. Unfortunately, the corporate interests that so want to control our beliefs are silently eliminating the traditions that teach us how to think. ( )

In Seventeen Traditions, Nader uses his childhood memories to talk about how his parents raised him and how he became the person he is and how today's society is missing a lot of what made it better in the past. It's not a "get off my lawn!" kind of forlorn look back at what was and what can never be again, but rather, it's offering some good take-aways for people who might actually care about raising their kids to be a benefit rather than a detriment to the world around them.

I'm sure Nader has overly sugar-coated his work since it was published during his last presidential run. But to be honest, if I had read it at that time, I probably would have voted for him. ( )

a thoughtful description of nader's upbringing; worth reading if you're interested (as i am) in the variety of approaches to childrearing ( )