On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense
Author: David Brooks
The author of the acclaimed bestseller Bobos in Paradise, which hilariously described the upscale American culture, takes a witty look at how being American shapes us, and how America's suburban civilization will shape the world's future.
Take a look at Americans in their natural habitat. You see suburban guys at Home Depot doing that special manly, waddling walk that American men do in the presence of large amounts of lumber; super-efficient ubermoms who chair school auctions, organize the PTA, and weigh less than their children; workaholic corporate types boarding airplanes while talking on their cell phones in a sort of panic because they know that when the door closes they have to turn their precious phone off and it will be like somebody stepped on their trachea.
Looking at all this, you might come to the conclusion that we Americans are not the most profound people on earth. Indeed, there are millions around the world who regard us as the great bimbos of the globe: hardworking and fun, but also materialistic and spiritually shallow.
They've got a point. As you drive through the sprawling suburbs or eat in the suburban chain restaurants (which if they merged would be called Chili's Olive Garden Hard Rock Outback Cantina), questions do occur. Are we really as shallow as we look? Is there anything that unites us across the divides of politics, race, class, and geography? What does it mean to be American?
Well, mentality matters, and sometimes mentality is all that matters. As diverse as we are, as complacent as we sometimes seem, Americans are united by a common mentality, which we have inherited from our ancestors and pass on, sometimes unreflectingly, to our kids.
We are united by future-mindedness. We see the present from the vantage point of the future. We are tantalized, at every second of every day, by the awareness of grand possibilities ahead of us, by the bounty we can realize just over the next ridge.
This mentality leads us to work feverishly hard, move more than any other people on earth, switch jobs, switch religions. It makes us anxious and optimistic, manic and discombobulating.
Even in the superficiality of modern suburban life, there is some deeper impulse still throbbing in the heart of average Americans. That impulse is the subject of this book.
The New York Times - Joyce Maynard
In the same way that Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, pulled off the virtuoso accomplishment of making whole cloth from threads as diverse as the resurgence in popularity of Hush Puppies shoes and the breakthrough idea responsible for the success of "Sesame Street," Mr. Brooks has pulled together a vast range of source material -- from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Power Point presentations to Cigar Aficionado magazine -- to create a picture of the forces that have shaped our national character.
Publishers Weekly
For readers who are feeling glum about America and its place in the world, or those who despairingly look at our culture's cookie cutter, strip mall consumerism and flash-bang glitter, Brooks (Bobos in Paradise) offers a balm with his latest pseudo-sociological treatise. More a way to look at what he sees as America's problems (e.g., our thirst for enormous gas guzzlers and super-sized soft drinks) with optimism than a series of suggestions of how to fix them, this book by the New York Times op-ed columnist tells readers it's okay to consume, consume, consume-so long as they look toward the future while doing so. At times playful and sarcastic (though less funny than intended), the book jumps from statistical analysis to cultural observation to defense of Bush's foreign policy, all without much of a mooring in essential context or factual citation. This is deceptive optimism; one long essay insisting our society's problems are not so big, provided we talk about them in the right way. While engagingly written and insightful at points, Brooks's affirmation is unlikely to resound with anyone outside the conservative choir, and even less likely to spark change-or even a desire for change. Still, it's nice to feel loved-if not by the rest of the world, than at least by this author. Agents, Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Brooks, a NY Times op-ed columnist, the author of Bobos in Paradise, and a self-described comic sociologist, here accomplishes an admirable feat: he thoughtfully constructs a critique of American middle-class suburban culture while entertaining the reader with clever, laugh-out-loud observations (it's Jerry Seinfeld meets Modern American Sociology 101). Like Michael J. Weiss's The Clustered World and Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Brooks addresses consumerism in America. But according to him, it is the "Paradise Spell," the utopian American philosophy, that drives us to work harder, change addresses more often, and acquire more possessions than citizens of any other nation. Brooks puts middle-class America on the analyst's couch and concludes that we are not as shallow as we seem; instead, we are motivated by a tenacious optimism, a belief in the golden future just around the bend. For better or worse, Americans are dreamers, filled with hope, forever pursuing fantasies, and historically and uniquely obsessed with a complicated future. This is a persuasive and inspiring thesis, even if it's not completely convincing. Recommended for public and academic libraries of all kinds.-Lori Carabello, Ephrata P.L., PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
New York Times op-ed columnist Brooks, whose Bobos in Paradise (2000) anatomized "the new upper class," now sends up and celebrates America's middle class in all its vulgarity and yearning. The war with Iraq, according to the author, revived foreign images of the American as the "Cosmic Blonde" of the international community-i.e., an infuriatingly blessed global bimbo. Yet Brooks finds that the nation is "infused with a utopian fire that redeems its people, despite the crass and cynical realities." His account considers what life is like in the several varieties of suburbia; why Americans race so feverishly through life; and whether our purported shallowness is grounded in reality. At the root of American life from its beginnings, he finds, is a pursuit of perfection that can be seen in both large social movements (periodic moral crusades) and even individual creations of all manner of inventions, management procedures, and motivational mantras. Brooks surveys how middle-class Americans' aspirations manifest themselves in child-rearing, college life, shopping, and working. All this ceaseless striving is not without cost: non-religious schools, for instance, come in for rueful criticism for not instilling a coherent moral system. Frequently using trade-association data as well as his own "comic sociology," Brooks delights in overturning conventional wisdom. For example, far from the stereotype of clusters of conformity long derided by intellectuals, today's suburbs, he observes, contain "lesbian dentists, Iranian McMansions, Korean megachurches, nuclear-free-zone subdevelopments, Orthodox shetls with Hasidic families walking past strip malls on their way to Saturday-morning shul."Sandwiched between the cheeky one-liners (the alternative weekly, with their uniformity of format and point of view from one city to the next, "is the most conservative form of American journalism") are astute readings of the contemporary scene (golf, he believes, is central to the middle-class American's "definition of what life should be like in its highest and most pleasant state"). From a cuddly conservative: a genial ode to America that only a snooty French deconstructionist could fail to find amusing and enlightening.
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The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
Author: Philip K Howard
America is drowning: in law, legality, bureaucratic process. Abandoning our common sense and individual sense of responsibility, we live in terror of the law, in awe of procedure, at war with one another. Philip K. Howard has written the explosive manifesto for liberation--one of the most talked about sociopolitical treatises of our time. Citing dozens of examples of bureaucratic overkill--everything from the labeling of window cleaner as a toxic substance to the U.S. Department of Defense spending $2 billion on travel and $2.2 billion processing the paperwork for that travel--The Death of Common Sense shows how far we have wandered, how we got into this mess, and how we can--and must--get out.
Publishers Weekly
Lawyer Howard's indictment of governmental bureaucracy and excessive regulations was a PW bestseller for 25 weeks. (Mar.)
Library Journal
The nuns of the Missionaries of Charity believed two abandoned buildings in New York City would make ideal homeless shelters. The city agreed and offered to sell the building for one dollar each. Yet the shelter project faltered: the city's bureaucracy imposed such expensive remodeling requirements on the buildings that the shelter plans were scrapped. To Howard, an attorney practicing in New York City, this is but one of many examples of the law's suffocating Americans by extensive decrees on what may and may not be done. His book is truly a catalog of horror stories, actually quite engrossing and adding to the story of public inefficiencies chronicled by David Osborne's Reinventing Government (Addison-Wesley, 1992). What Howard does not do as well, however, is offer guidance on remedies. His answer seems to be that we should take personal responsibility, gather up our courage, and step out into the sunlight away from government's shadow. More highly recommended as a study of the negative impact of law is Walter K. Olson's The Litigation Explosion (LJ 2/15/91) even though its focus is on lawsuits and the courts.-Jerry E. Stephens, U.S. Court of Appeals Lib., Oklahoma City
Table of Contents:
| I | The Death of Common Sense | 1 |
| II | The Buck Never Stops | 55 |
| III | A Nation of Enemies | 111 |
| IV | Releasing Ourselves | 169 |
| Acknowledgments | 189 | |
| Author's Note on Sources | 193 | |
| Index | 207 |
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