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Bezig met laden... The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America (origineel 2018; editie 2018)door Sarah Kendzior (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkThe View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America door Sarah Kendzior (2018)
Macmillan Publishers (82) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Good perspective on how we got to the Trump era. ( ) Let's get this out of the way first: yes, the title of this collection of essays is slightly misleading (comparatively few of the pieces actually focus on the Midwest, and most of those that do hone in on St Louis, the city in which author Sarah Kendzior lives). Yes, the essays themselves are really just a collection of short pieces and blog articles, written mostly for various online publications in the early 2010s and largely unrevised. Some of the pieces are repetitive, and some of them would have benefited from being expanded. However, to dismiss The View from Flyover Country on the basis of those quibbles is to miss the forest for the trees. Kendzior is one of the most incisive writers on American culture and politics today, using her academic expertise (she holds a PhD in Anthropology, having researched the authoritarian regimes of Central Asia) to deliver a fairly damning indictment. This is not a feel-good book, especially when read in 2018 and seeing how many of Kendzior's predictions—dismissed, like Cassandra's prophecies—have come to pass. I've noticed several reviewers on Goodreads critique Kendzior for not providing hope, for not providing a plan for Americans to get themselves out of the mess in which they currently find themselves. This, of course, is to miss some of the key points that Kendzior makes, over and over: that there are no single causes, and so there will be no single solutions. This is systemic. You've got to look outside of yourself, look around you, see who's struggling and who needs help and do the work. No one is going to come along and save you. Do the work. I read this collection of essays over a period of several weeks, usually one article each morning with my wake-up cup of tea. This was partly because I don't like to read a whole series of essays by one person in a go; topics shift, the rhythm of short pieces is choppy, the pieces run together. Partly it was because each one gave me something to think about all day. And partly it was because reading essays written in 2012-14 and realizing that nothing was new or improved was deeply depressing. Kendzior is a sharp reporter, and her academic expertise in authoritarianism and the social and cultural conditions that both create it and are created by it informs much of what she sees. She has the ability to point out that what we have been conditioned to accept as normal is anything but. She unsparingly destroys the American myth of the meritocracy, and shows how our system is set up to perpetuate a wealthy elite, while the rest of us fall further and further behind. Infuriating, intense, inspiring. Recommended. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Offers a collection of essays on the state of America, including how labor exploitation, racism, gentrification, media bias, and other aspects of a post-employment economy have given rise to an autocrat leader. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)973.932History and Geography North America United States 1901- Bush Administration And Beyond Barack ObamaLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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