For objective thinkers as to why our society has gone astray.
926745
I commend the writer, her explicit realization is clearly defined within this publication. It's a must read for any objective thinker who wished to embrace the fact our society has been led astray by those who seek to enslave us all.
4753421
This book gets right down to the matter of why our nation and people are in decline. Everyone should read it and apply its principles.
4152781
This book helped me understand better why the way we live is driving us to self-destruction. And as I started to identify some of the mechanisms that shape our tragic misfortune, it became increasingly natural to me seeing at other forms of human organization, more logical and sustainable, as results of rational designs which are simpler and smarter at once.

To admit the deception in which we are all immersed, basically the absurdity of monetary incentives, is hard because it leaves us unarmed before the irrationality of the time. Thats why I think these kinds of readings are needed. Because they help us to think better, to discern the few pillars on which we should focus to become more constructive as a species and as individuals.

As I progressed in the reading, I began to realize that I wasn't so good or honest as I had thought. I also started to understand that a big part of my miseries is a logical consequence if my ignorance, of my psychological or mental limitations, in sum, of everything that prevents me stimulate my critic, including my own behavior, which is not very different from many others and creates patterns of human development highly negative.

Fortunately, the book also gave me some clues on how we could structure the restoration of our collective mistakes. And it did so in a very original way, free from grandiloquence and still plethoric of ideas and meaning.

It is remarkable to see someone able to compile so much wisdom in so few pages and irradiate torrents of light on our otherwise poorly colored existence.

This work is not a wail, is a construction that does not underestimates the reader and puts them in better conditions for considering five basic strategies to rebuild the future.

We need more books like this one, and more thinkers as Peter Joseph, because we need get away from our confusion and the surrounding mediocrity.
4258271
We drive down the freeway of life and are bombarded with little slogans and attempts to convince and smartly convert us to a way of thinking with marketing bill boards, or through the mail, on TV, in the paper - subtle attempts to steal our minds by over-loading them with a coorporate marketing agenda and sloganism.  A bit abusive language on my part.

The question is worth pondering, and the questions raised in this book are of the sort that any educated man should ponder, even if there is no solution, it makes great "smartening-up" not "dumbing down" (sloganism) of the curriculum.  Peiper persuasively argues that communication is not happening as much as might be thought, because communication must be void of ulterior motives.  And his arguement that we must be able to express our view of the "truth of things" in freedom; why many do not is due to what he calls "the lingo of the revolution".
4914685
Let's face it, the state isn't what's keeping us from becoming Mozarts or Einsteins.  It's our lack of talent and intellectual acumen.  Objectivism with a little spoonful of reality. Rand was brilliant at deluding the hoi polloi into blaming their humdrum existences on external constraints.  Unfortunately, we see our enemy every morning in the mirror.
4727645
One has to be of age to understand the content. The sad thing is that Ayn Rand saw where the western world was heading and now, we are living it.
2629977
Tony Judt is an early conscience of our society regarding such as the imbalance between rich and poor, for example. Many have written on the issues he outlines but his clear and concise observations could provide a simplicity facilitating further discussion.  A case can be made this simplicity would be useful, perhaps necessary, for our federal government for example, to develop understandable and efficiently implementable legislative solutions for our problems.  There must be, for example, more articulate if perhaps lengthy formulations than ponderous efforts such as Dodd/Frank or Affordable Care Act legislation.  Unfortunately few in government have probably read this book.
2713163
Crystal clear chronological explanations revealing why we feel that our country's going down hill.
1410494
Certainly sheds a bright light on why we have seen the decline of the"middle class".  Unless there are major changes in the growing inequality it is difficult to be optimistic about any chance of the so called level playing field.
2969023
This is one book that explains the rudimentary reasons we are at this crucial stage of our personal and social development. Our society is at a crossroads.  Because of the major advances in technology we can no longer afford to linger in behaviors that limit our ability to adjust into an advanced culture.  Because dysfunctional personalities now dominate our major social institutions it behooves us to understand how and why this has happened.  What we are left with is the responsibility and realization that real social change happens one person at a time, and this book is a vital tool in that quest.
360195
This book describes global socioeconomic up-trends that most people are unaware of. This is important stuff to understandwe need to know what has gone right, not just focus on disasters. A lot has gone right since the Scientific Revolution of the 1500s and the Enlightenment of the 1700s: increases in income, literacy, democracy, and womens rights, and, even remarkably large decreases in crime and violence.

The book gives a lot of the credit for the up-trends to free market capitalism, which, in many cases is quite accurate. But the book, published in 2017, ignores the Great Recession and growing income inequality and even growing poverty in countries like the U.S. It implies that at this time more free market capitalism is just what the doctor ordered. A more objective analysis would point out that given the cracks that are developing in the U.S. economic system, its time to re-evaluate our next steps.

The author, Johan Norberg, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank. His transparent agenda to reduce governmental regulation reduces the books objectivity. How can the author imply that free market capitalism has somehow IMPROVED the natural environment? He fails to mention or give credit to the dedicated environmental organizations which battled the corporations to increase regulations and ameliorate some of the worst corporate pollution problems. The book has the taint of propaganda. This is unfortunate, because the important and accurate statistical data presented on the many global up-trends should be better known.
3599433
Thesis: our elites and educational systems kindergarten through university have been overthrown or taken over since about 1970 by left wing believers who pass their ignorance along to later generations. The nation is in crisis and the existing education system is the rotten core but the internet offers a path to renewal. The author is a famous computer scientist and knows the technology so his proposal is reasonable.
A note of criticism: the author is not a good stylist.
4438834
Robert Bly captures a stark vision of where society has been led by our insatiable & gluttonous desire for more. This has left us as an impoverished under developed species which is now threatening our own survival as we have unintentionally surrender our individuality becoming pawns for corporate manipulation.
3923155
This is an interesting reformulation of the collective unconscious of modern society. The paths taken as formative are not those of the Freudian or Jungian but rather the paths of societal development within a context of the environmental conditions that under pin modern economic theory. It is a beautifully written and thought provoking work that calls upon us to reevaluate what its is that we have come to assume as the givens of the world and to reconsider those assumptions in terms of their effects upon the world.
2984298
A well thought out analysis of the social implications of the information age; offers some useful proposals for socially progressive solutions.
2836033
Eloquently portrays the facts supporting the myth of America's classless society.  There are definitely classes in America, they just don't have clear names.  They can generally be called "haves" and "have nots".  The equality trend is going in the wrong direction for democracy, it's beginning to resemble Brazil like dual social structure.  I hope that enough politicians and lawyers read this book, perhaps the millennials will care enough about these issues and do something about them.
3949754
Mark provides a profound assessment of why America is in decline and the incorrect assumptions about human nature made by liberals. Liberals childish insistence on utopia, their fanciful divorce from reality, is a philosophical foundation that is busily destroying America.