[Springboard] Outliers study session 3. Great study, see you next time -- What about a next book?

[Marianna Bailey]

This looks like a very interesting book. We are interested.

Marianna
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: James Wiegel 
  To: Springboard Dialogue 
  Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 9:36 PM
  Subject: Re: [Springboard] Outliers study session 3. Great study,see you next time -- What about a next book?


        Anyone interested in studying THE BIG SORT?







        THE BIG SORT (Houghton Mifflin, May 7, 2008) is the landmark story of how America came to be a country of swelling cultural division, economic separation, and political polarization.

        Going far beyond the simplistic red state/blue state divide, journalist Bill Bishop (in collaboration with sociologist and statistician Robert Cushing) marshals original data and incisive reporting to show how Americans have sorted themselves geographically, economically, and politically into like-minded communities over the last three decades. 

        Homogeneity may be a perk of the unprecedented choice our society offers—but it also breeds economic inequality, cultural misunderstanding, political extremism, and legislative gridlock. This is the story of our times, and its reality poses a profound threat to democracy, but no one before now has seemed to notice, let alone been able to describe, its causes and consequences. 

        The nation we live in—our culture, economy, neighborhoods, and churches—has been sculpted by the Big Sort over the past thirty years: 








        How did zip codes become as useful to political activists as to mail carriers? In the relatively new cultural dynamics of political segregation, Bishop discerns a troubling transformation of American life. Complex and surprising, the story of that transformation will confound readers who suppose that recent decades have made American society both more diverse and more tolerant. Pinpointing 1965 as the year when events in Vietnam, Washington, and Watts delivered body blows to traditional social institutions, Bishop recounts how Americans who had severed ties to community, faith, and family forged new affiliations based on lifestyle preferences. The resulting social realignment has segmented the nation into groupthink communities, fostering political smugness and polarization. The much-noted cartography of Red and Blue states, as Bishop shows, actually distorts the reality of a deeply Blue archipelago of urban islands surrounded by a starkly Red rural sea. Bishop worries about the future of democratic discourse as more and more Americans live, work, and worship surrounded by people who echo their own views. A raft of social-science research underscores the growing difficulty of bipartisan compromise in a balkanized country where politicians win office by satisfying their most radical constituents. A book posing hard questions for readers across the political spectrum.

        Bryce Christensen


        Jim Wiegel

        If anyone tells you something strange about the world, something you had never heard before, do not laugh but listen attentively; make him repeat it, make him explain it; no doubt there is something there worth taking hold of. -- Georges Duhamel.

        401 North Beverly Way 
        Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401
        +1 623-936-8671
        +1 623-363-3277
        jfwiegel at yahoo.com
        www.partnersinparticipation.com

        --- On Wed, 5/27/09, Robert Rafos <rafos at sympatico.ca> wrote:


          From: Robert Rafos <rafos at sympatico.ca>
          Subject: [Springboard] Outliers study session 3.
          To: "Springboard Dialogue" <springboard at wedgeblade.net>
          Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009, 12:24 PM


          Tonight at 6:00 P.M. Mountain time continues the study of Outliers, Chapters 6 and 7.


          Dial in Number is: 269-320-8400


          Access code is: 881373#


          Chart attached


          Bob Rafos




          "Remember the trail, for if you don't know the way you have come, you will be lost."  -  Grandfather Albert, a Sicangu Lakota.

          -----Inline Attachment Follows-----


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