Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America

by John McWhorter

In his first major book on the state of black America since the New York Times bestseller Losing the Race, John McWhorter argues that a renewed commitment to achievement and integration is the only cure for the crisis in the African-American community. Winning the Race examines the roots of the serious problems facing black Americans today—poverty, drugs, and high incarceration rates—and contends that none of the commonly accepted reasons can explain the decline of black communities since the end of segregation in the 1960s. Instead, McWhorter posits that a sense of victimhood and alienation that came to the fore during the civil rights era has persisted to the present day in black culture, even though most blacks today have never experienced the racism of the segregation era.

McWhorter traces the effects of this disempowering conception of black identity, from the validation of living permanently on welfare to gansta rap’s glorification of irresponsibility and violence as a means of “protest.” He discusses particularly specious claims of racism, attacks the destructive posturing of black leaders and the “hip-hop academics,” and laments that a successful black person must be faced with charges of “acting white.” While acknowledging that racism still exists in America today, McWhorter argues that both blacks and whites must move past blaming racism for every challenge blacks face, and outlines the steps necessary for improving the future of black America.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Race, Politics, Society, Social Science, Psychology

434 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

John Hamilton McWhorter (Professor McWhorter uses neither his title nor his middle initial as an author) is an American academic and linguist who is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy, and music history. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. His research specializes on how creole languages form, and how language grammars change as the result of sociohistorical phenomena.

A popular writer, McWhorter has written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, City Journal, The New Yorker, among others; he is also contributing editor at The Atlantic and hosts Slate's Lexicon Valley podcas

Reviews

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read this book while working at the Dpt of Education in D.C. it was a great read at the time, because i was working in the charter schools division, specifically with a group of charters organizing around philosophies of afrocentricity.

McWhorter's basic argument is controversial amongst many black scholars-- yet echoed the ideas of the charters i was working with. McWhorter argues that there must be positive cultural reform from within the low-income black community before help from white institutions such as the U.S. government is accepted.

although i recognize the shortcomings of such self-reform arguments, i will say that reading this book while working with an exciting group of grassroots schools was thought-provoking.

i think of this book, and that time, frequently. where does empowerment start? from within? or, is empowerment provoked by the advantages of wealth and community?

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I will not allow one prejudiced person or one million or one hundred million to blight my life. I will not let prejudice or any of its attendant humiliations and injustices bear me down to spiritual defeat. My inner life is mine, and I will defend and maintain its integrity against the forces of hell."

I highlighted the above from this book because it sums up how I feel about being a black woman in America today and why I am so frustrated about how I see so many other black people living their life in America today.
Since this book was published, America has changed. We've had a black President and first family and we've had his successor whose time in the White House had the (mis)fortune of opening the eyes of many to just how racist America can be. That being said, I still agree with much of what McWhorter has to say. He is wordy and sometimes lost me, but his main point is clear...even in the eye of racism and racist practices, black people must be responsible to and for ourselves if we intend to have a good life.
Systemic racism, which I am pretty sure McWhorter doesn't believe exists, does exist in my opinion, but I agree with the author that it isn't the reason that every poor black person is poor or uneducated or in prison. Why aren't any of the above expected to stand up for themselves and demand better? Why the perpetual casting of the race as a collective of victims? I am no one's victim. Have I experienced racism? Not blatantly, but I am not naive, I am always on guard as I dont know how my dark skin will be perceived by a white person the first time we meet. There is a balancing act to being black in America, but that doesn't give us the excuse to throw our hands up, waiting around for our reparations that will surely never come. Understandably, it is hard to achieve greatness without support from those around you, but as the author says, why can't this group of Americans do it when dark-skinned immigrants do it all the time? Surely, they face the same racism as black Americans; the truly racist among us can't be bothered to differentiate between one dark-skinned person or another, so they lump us all together, yet that doesn't stop the immigrants from achieving.
I started reading this book during the BLM protests in 2020 as a counterpoint to that movement because I am frustrated by their lack of agenda and prescription for a path forward. Protesting police brutality and killing of people during routine stops is appropriate, but lumping that injustice in with the ongoing problems many blacks still experience, saying they all are on the same spectrum and stem from the same cause is not. BLM, as a movement, must acknowledge that racism aside, we, as a people, must be responsible for ourselves and must take advantage of the real opportunities we have, so we can finally shrug off the shackles of oppression and no longer epitomize failure, poverty and despair. I am no one's victim and desire the day when all of my black brothers and sisters can say the same.

[Josie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I clearly keep changing my mind on this book as I re engage with the topic.

[Sanjay Varma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember the first time I realized that the information we hear may not be true. I was sixteen and I had been reading about Israel and Palestine for years. Suddenly I wondered, did Jewish people really steal Palestinian land, or did the state of Israel get founded in a way that was fair and legal? I had heard both opinions, how was I to know which was true? Naively, I went to the library and began reading, and I found that there were two totally separate versions of Israeli-Palestinian history. There was no attempt to bridge the gap. Similarly, "Winning The Race" reminds me that in America there are two sides to the conversation about race, and ne'er the twain shall meet.

McWhorter tries to untangle and undermine the truth of a liberal version of race in which poverty, drug use, and dissolution of marriage in inner city neighborhoods is caused by loss of good factory jobs and housing discrimination. In its place, he pushes the conservative idea that "black power" ideology and easy access to welfare are the true culprits. There are even moments of real insight such as when he criticizes black activists today by saying: "...what began as concrete activism aimed at getting justice devolved into abstract gestures unconcerned with justice. The vestigial live in because they serve a psychological function."

In the end, I don't think he will change many minds because these battle lines are so hardened. But I honestly appreciated reading the conservative viewpoint. McWhorter diligently tries to purify jargon of racist connotations. If this book has a lasting impact, it will be because of its relentless reclaiming of language from the taint of racism in order to show that conservative arguments are not inherently racist.

On the downside, McWhorter loses credibility when he snipes at liberal "Brie-and-Zinfandel" orthodoxy. He also relies on straw man arguments that reveal a strong bias, such as when McWhorter describes a family in which 2 siblings rose out of poverty to hold steady middle class jobs, yet he still focuses on their sister who remained on welfare, had babies by different fathers, and got fired from multiple job.

Finally, it bothered me that McWhorter fulfills the stereotypical role of the black conservative, protesting too much that he has never personally experienced any racism directed towards himself. He claims he's only been called "nigger" once in his whole life (yeah, right), and claims his psyche was not wounded at all when a stranger accuses him of trying to hit on white women at a wedding reception at a fancy club. Professor McWhorter, it was wrong that those people said those awful things to you. There is no shame in admitting that it hurt your feelings. To admit this would not undermine your argument that black culture needs to reform.

So after taking us on a nice journey through history, fact, and myth, in the end we still are left with separate truths for the liberal and conservative view of black culture.

[Andre · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book came out in 2005 and what he describes is from 2003, and yet it sounds sooo much like what I've come across over the last two years several times.
It started very promising and with a really good question: If Blacks in America could move during the Great Migration from South to North in search for work, why couldn't so many after the 1960s? That is really weird. And we have immigrants who travelled even further and with less and for less.
According to him, in Indianapolis the factories moved at most a few miles away from where they were before, so not out of reach [I have colleagues who travel further daily] and yet Indianapolis faced the same problems so many other black communities did after the 1960s. This is a problem for the thesis of "moved away factories = poor and criminal blacks." He puts on the thero that the fact of being on welfare being more lucrative than having a job had negative consequences.
Furthermore, the segregation explanation really sounds like: Put only blacks among each other and they will end up killing each other. Which sounds really racist as if they need white people to show them how to live or bring money into the community.
The author mostly argues that a cultural shift had taken place since the 1960s among american blacks, which is a stronger influence now than any racism or redlining because it led to a countercultural attitude as opposed to what was considered "white" and mainstream and alot of that was working, being educated and doing well on your own." He argues that poor blacks have a culture of poverty now, one that is not leading to have them starve but doesn't bring them any further. It is connected to a rise in numbers of people on welfare that he considers concerning and that basically many black Americans became that they were better off with refraining for supporting themselves. That sounds like they encouraged theft!
No clue whether Soul Food restaurants would be as thriving as he claims, but it can't be denied that for many people among immigrants opening restaurants worked well.
Also, that black employers don't want to hire black people from certain areas is not due to racism but bad experience with people from said areas is something that doesn't sit well with so many people these days. Even when they acknowledge said problem. And interesting, according to him, the stereotypes of blacks having a chip on their shoulder an being unwilling to work didn't exist in the old days.
He mentions Eric Hoeffer's The True Believer now. Interesting. Also, how therapeutic alienation, resistance for its own sake and the like had became the identity for a lot of blacks in America. I still think he falls partially into that as well, by blaming so much on history. At least it seems that way. But what good has ever come out of that approach?
What he talks about the meme of therapeutic alienation and being indignated for indignation's sake sounds so familiar. I've come across so many examples. People complaining about the use of origami magic in games, alleged underrepresentation, constant claims of white supremacy and racism and this damn hypocrisy in movies and "representation" that is just tokenism with no rhyme or reason.
And to show some difference between today and decades past, he mentions a story with Bert Williams that really sucks. Imagine that, pretty much every actor is out there protesting and not a single one of them or any of the crew bothered to tell you. This was back in the early 20th century were there were only phones and newspapers and so people had to care about you to call you and if no one told or called him that meant he was an outsider.
He had a good chapter on the academics and how they seem to cover this topic. I heard of this "acting white" phenomenon among American blacks but I had no idea it was, maybe still is, so common among the middle class there. And apparently both black and white teachers say that the acting white charge is levelled at black students. And the white teachers are more reluctant to say so. And saying that teachers' biases are based on correct observation of student performance would not sit well with sooooo many people these days.
In 2003 out of 76 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) at almost half of them, 2/3 or more students had not graduated after 6 years. That is pretty bad. And at Harvard 2/3 of the black undergraduates were of Carribbean and African parentage. That makes it clear that racism is not a decisive factor in keeping black students from Harvard.
And ge is so right. That these people can afford to make so much fuss, shows how much oppression has declined. Sadly, many of this book's statements are as relevant today as they were when it came out. It would have been great if it weren't so, in a sense, but sadly that is not the case. The "black = not-white" meme exists today, even in the more PC term, "people of color", just like it did back then. And maybe it is stronger, or perhaps we see it (and those memes connected to it), in its death throes. But then that death is really slow, looking at this book after so many years.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FORMER PROFESSOR OF LINGUISTICS LOOKS AT CULTURAL CHANGE

John Hamilton McWhorter (born 1965) wrote in the Introduction to this 2006 book, “there is still, as Randall Robinson … [said] in the title of his best seller of 2000, a DEBT that America owes to black people… The American government did not do enough… Black America needs a Second Civil Rights Revolution…. For our informed race warriors, black America’s problem is white people. The white people who moved their factories to the suburbs … and left urban blacks without dependable low-skill jobs… The white people who pumped crack into poor black communities… For such people, black America’s problem, then and now, is The Man… The argument … is the result of a fatal combination of economics, racism, architecture… promoted by people with a sincere concern for black Americans left behind. It is also wrong. This book is dedicated to explaining why this argument is wrong, and what this means for how we will chart black America’s future.” (Pg. 3-4)

He adds, “My goal in this book is a revision of how we see black America’s past and present… My purpose will be to show that it must stop being considered ‘controversial’ to acknowledge that cultural change played a central role here… I believe that we cannot understand our past without fully facing that alienation and misidentification can thrive independently of modern causes because they can serve other psychological purposes… in the 1960s… two things happened. One, rejecting mainstream norms became vibrantly fashionable … and in black America this often translated into a bone-deep wariness of ‘white’ norms. Two, welfare became an open-ended opportunity… Yet, informed wisdom is that these developments had nothing significant to do with the social breakdown of the inner cities and that the main culprit was whitey and his ‘systemic racism.’ This makes no sense: It helps no one, and it will not do.” (Pg. 12-13)

He states, “The social science orthodoxy usually [argues]… that when whites leave the result is the spread of the same old ghetto. But… the result of white flight… has also often been new middle-class black neighborhoods… the empty houses whites leave there are often occupied not only by more middle-class blacks, but also by working-class ones taking advantage of the moderate prices that increased supply creates. To treat white flight as INEVITABLY leaving a ghetto behind would seem to deny the economic diversity among blacks that is elsewhere considered so urgent to acknowledge, on the pain of revealing oneself as naive at best or a racist at worst.” (Pg. 85)

He argues, “Poor blacks did not, AS A RULE, leap at drink or drugs … in such GREAT NUMBERS in the old days. They only did so to such a ruinous extent after the sixties. This was because they were now living in a period when the levels of basic shame in doing so were lower than they had ever been in American history. This was sparked initially by the countercultural revolution among whites, when drug use went mainstream. But where poor blacks … ran with it in the uniquely destructive way in which they did, the issue was a new culture of alienation, under which becoming a drug seller was not only okay, but even a mark of strength… the same Zeitgeist meant something different for the black man in 1978 who grew up poor. F__k authority. Why should I salute the The System and work for ‘chump change’ … So off he went to the corner to take his place as one more black man making a LIVING selling blow---and eventually he went to jail… Not because of the po-lice, who had been vicious for decades before 1978, during which young black men … had nevertheless continued to work respectable jobs… Not because factories moved away… And not because he didn’t grow up with the role models of buttoned-up ‘Negroes’ who shunned drugs, who made him slightly sick anyway because they ‘thought they were white.’ They went to jail because a new culture decided how he related to the world he knew. That culture did not exist until about 1966.” (Pg. 109-110)

He adds, “I cannot help but see a connection between the fact that poor blacks took their bad turn exactly when a new sociopolitical consensus took over the country as a whole, including new government policies that encouraged poor blacks to build lives around it.” (Pg. 110)

He summarizes, “My argument… unabashedly assumed that there is such a thing as a culture of poverty… My explicit aim is to argue that poor blacks indeed have been waylaid by a culture of poverty… I intend… to get at just what led poor blacks to fall into this culture of poverty so deeply at a particular time. This book is… one more in the line of arguments that poor blacks’ problems are primarily due to culture rather then economics.” (Pg. 112)

He argues, “Mix political cynicism and a new cultural imperative to give blacks what would later be termed reparations, and you get the boated, self-perpetuating AFDC bureaucracies … where over the years workers were compensated more for signing people up than for ever getting them back to work… after 1966, it was possible for a woman to go on welfare regardless of the quality of home life that she provided for her children, even when the children’s father lived with her without having or seeking work… her city’s government had no interest in whether she ever worked again, and in fact valued her as … how many black women had been seduced onto the rolls by a new informed white consensus that saw this as a victory. That… was open-ended welfare… that, until 1996, was as ordinary as Kool-Aid in poor black communities.” (Pg. 122-123)

He reveals, “here is my life. I have no problems with the police. I have never been pulled aside for a drug search or even touched by an officer… Only once to I recall ever being tailed in a store… Now have I ever gotten the sense that a clerk considered me too poor to afford higher-end items---rather, I have the … experience of having to ward clerks off from trying to get me to buy more expensive merchandise to up their commissions… Not once has any white person questioned me to my face as to my credentials for engaging in any activity or profession. The barriers to promotion that many blacks report in corporate life and law firms have been unknown to me in academia. There, black faces are so ‘welcome’ that on the contrary, being black often makes it easier rather than harder to get tenure… I have occasionally felt that … I got praise beyond what I deserved… But I cannot see this as … worthy of ‘rage,’ especially since I have never experienced this to a degree that could be considered outright condescension.” (Pg. 201-202)

He suggests, “Ironically, the demise of segregation … helped pave the way for the ‘acting white’ charge… black students began going to school with white ones in larger numbers than ever before, which meant that whites were available for black students to model themselves against… treating the act of doing well in school as disloyal became attractive under the new way of thinking that was settling into the black community. An open-ended wariness of whites became a bedrock of black identity… If this had not led black kids to start turning away from school as ‘white,’ it would have been surprising.” (Pg. 268-269)

He notes, “there will come no great day when such [racial] biases are entirely absent. And---there is no indication that black students are incapable of rising above them. There is, in fact, a clear indication that they can: Two-thirds of the black undergraduates at Harvard are of Caribbean and African parentage… we must admit that the success of these immigrants’ children shows… that RACISM is not a decisive factor in keeping black students from getting into Harvard. The immigrants’ kids managed despite RACISM, which means that what hinders the black American kids is something else.” (Pg. 293)

He points out, “as an employee of a free-market think tank and viewed as I am as a ‘black conservative,’ I have had occasion to meet quite a few black Republicans… Black Republicans are a highly ‘diverse’ crowd, with all of the dreadlocks, Black English vocal inflections, hip-hop on their car radios, Zora Neale Hurston novels on their bookshelves… that we might think of as ‘authentic.’ They are different from black Democrats only in a spontaneous understanding that resonant catchphrases and buzzwords are not activism.” (Pg. 365)

He concludes, “In this book I have tried to make clearer just what made the difference between black American in 1960 and black American today, and what this means in terms of where we go from here and why. Specifically, I hope to have shown that the nut of the issue is that black America turned upside down in a particular ten-year period, from 1960 to 1970, and that this era has left us a legacy much more damaging today than anything racism has left us… it is not true that the reason for modern black America’s ills is racism. The reason is a cultural shift now forty years old… opposition as an identity gives a sense of purpose to people deprive of one for any number of reasons and is a handy way of refreshing even an identity less damaged. The result has been… a way of responding to the world and forming judgments that correspond fitfully to reality.” (Pg. 376)

This book will be of great interest for those wanting to read a challenging perspective on contemporary racial/ethnic issues.

[Jesse Rine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid follow-up to his "Losing the Race". Being a college professor and a linguist, it is understandable that the book gets wordy, and could benefit from an editorial trimming to make his points stand tall.

That being said, I think McWhorter's diagnosis of the problems facing the black community (from within and without) has much to recommend it, particularly since it is a perspective that is consciously ignored and derided. Even if he is not 100% correct in all of his claims, the fact that this perspective is so forcefully pushed out of today's conversation (often without logical reason or data) makes this book vitally important.

Having said that his diagnosis is persuasive, I was hoping for more of a prescription from McWhorter. I think he did a great job telling us what is wrong and how the status quo came to be, but dropped the ball somewhat regarding practical steps forward. His last chapter touches on these issues (perhaps laying a conceptual foundation for others to build practical solutions on), but I was still expecting more. With another chapter or two focused in that area, this would have been a 5-star book, easily.

I stumbled on to McWhorter's work after seeing a young woman reading "Losing the Race" on the DC Metro, and after finishing two of his books and some of his columns online, I'll be coming back for more.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

John McWhorter wrote a wonderful book explaining the phenomenon of the decline of African-American ghettoes since the 1960's. His argument is well-specified, documented with data, and is clear to see. Highly recommended for all interested in U.S. city dynamics and African-American ethnic dynamics in the USA!

[Doris Raines · Rating 5 out of 5]

I. Really. Love. This. Book. You. Are. So. Right. John. Racism. Still. Exzists. Still. We. Did. Not. Make. Our. Selves. It. Is. The. Lord. Who. Made. Us. All. Indeed. He. Seem. Please. Doris.

[Vincent Lombardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is thought-provoking, insightful, and compelling. (The chapter on welfare alone makes this book worth reading.) I completely agree with McWhorter: culture matters, and culture more than anything is causing so many African-Americans to lag behind Whites and Asians. However, this book is too long, often abstruse, and very repetitive. For those reasons, I gave it only three stars. A book half as long would have been so much more effective.

[mark propp · Rating 5 out of 5]

i find the discussions held around race recently have been inane and unbelievable frustrating.

while reading this book, i kept wishing that the points being made were part of the discourse. it seems like we're doing everything except talking about the truly important things that actually matter.

i only wish this was a touch shorter. it could have been a little more concise. but otherwise, i think this is a great book that ought to be read by lots of people

[William Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important ideas beaten to death

John McWhorter makes several key points that need to be incorporated in our thinking on race TODAY in America. But, the book is a slog to get through because of the depth to which he chooses to go. None of it is wrong or irrelevant but in this case fewer words would have greater impact.

[PG Pariseau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, insightful (I think), but quite discursive and repetitious. A slower, less pointed read than "Losing the Race".
I'd love to read a revision or update in the light of late-teens politics and culture.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A carefully researched and logically thought out discussion on how the black ghetto culture came to be in the 60's ,and how to address the plight of poor black people without fruitlessly resorting to claims that it is all due to racism.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good. Dated, which shows the drawback to imagining what the future holds. But McWorther is an active commentator today

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-written, interesting, and informative. I love John McWhorter’s brain.

[Fluttershy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Andrew Gilligan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required reading

Jon McWhorter provides invaluable perspective on being human in modern day America to people of all races, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Important book, but felt twice as it needed to be.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

John McWhorter writes a scary book about race. I thought Winning the Race was supposed to be the optimistic rebuttal to his own book Losing the Race, but it isn't, oh boy. McWhorter contends that the state of black America from the 1960s onward is the result of what he calls "therapeutic alienation," the result of a cultural meme created in the last years of American apartheid that's stuck around for multiple decades because it's a convenient shorthand for a peoples' experience of why they aren't doing as well as they should. McWhorter points out that black poverty was actually on the decline in the 1960s and 1970s when open-ended welfare was championed by a certain set of academic sociologists who viewed blacks as incapable finding adequate employment and also considered welfare to be a back-door way of reparations. McWhorter argues that while some black people were pulling themselves up, the people who chose the not-terribly-admirable-but-all-too-human easy way found themselves in a culturally detrimental cycle where women could have as many kids as happened to happen to them and raise them at a subsistence level, where men, no longer needing to provide for their families in any meaningful way, could behave in a way that was, a generation previous, reserved for the bottom of society, and that this cycle became quickly established and easily self-perpetuating, as sixteen-year-olds are not the best judges of their own fate. Therapeutic alienation became a way to explain this state of being without blaming the actors. He agrees that racism does still exist, but that the systemic racism of American up to the '60s is passed, and that experiencing overt discrimination can be traumatic but lower class black experience over-relies on explanations of racism, when an unwillingness to engage with formal society is also in play. McWhorter takes down the common arguments explaining the state of Black America, that the jobs left, that drugs came in. A black man can certainly still be arrested for sitting in a chair in St. Paul, but McWhorter calls foul on a university president's moaning that his hotel room is too far from the elevator because he's black. Winning the Race is more universal in its address than Losing the Race, which focused more on higher ed, a topic no doubt close to McWhorter's heart. Very interesting, very good, made me feel racist for agreeing with parts. McWhorter has another short popular book on linguistics out and he's not writing for Time anymore. What is he up to?

http://surfeitofbooks.blogspot.com/20...

[The American Conservative]

'Readers will recognize some of McWhorter’s themes from his previous books. Now, in Winning the Race, he targets the conventional wisdom that roots today’s black pathology primarily in past economic tribulations. For McWhorter, the roots are decidedly grounded in culture. This approach to the subject is not entirely unique and has been handled by other authors, most notably by Shelby Steele. McWhorter, however, strives to expand on why social deterioration occurred as it did.'

Read the full review, "Alienaton as Self-Medication," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Jacob O'connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw John McWhorter on John Stossel's show, and I got this book expecting a libertarian take on the drug war. I wasn't at all expecting McWhorter's musings on race. Essentially, he diagnoses the social and economic inequities, among other things (like racism) as 'therapeutic alienation", or "indignation for its own sake".

I'll leave it to someone else to decide if McWhorter makes his case. For my part, he brought back some memories of my hip-hop youth and some of the neighborhoods I grew up in. This book was longer than it needed to be, and even if he's right, I'm not sure what we're supposed to do now.

[Robert Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some excellent points, but he does not offer a full explanation of the topics he addresses, as he ignores far too much. His use of “meme” is a major mistake. The concept is deeply flawed and inarticulate, and the comparisons to religion are ignorant and silly.

[Phobean · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tried twice to read this book, and failed. The writing voice was far too snarky and circular.