Christopher L. Hayes
Hardcover | Pages: 304 pages Rating: 4 | 5545 Users | 613 Reviews
List Of Books Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
| Title | : | Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy |
| Author | : | Christopher L. Hayes |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 304 pages |
| Published | : | June 12th 2012 by Crown |
| Categories | : | Politics. Nonfiction. Economics. History. Sociology |
Relation During Books Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
A powerful and original argument that traces the roots of our present crisis of authority to an unlikely source: the meritocracy.Over the past decade, Americans watched in bafflement and rage as one institution after another – from Wall Street to Congress, the Catholic Church to corporate America, even Major League Baseball – imploded under the weight of corruption and incompetence. In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters.
How did we get here? With Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite--one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it.
Mixing deft political analysis, timely social commentary, and deep historical understanding, Twilight of the Elites describes how the society we have come to inhabit – utterly forgiving at the top and relentlessly punitive at the bottom – produces leaders who are out of touch with the people they have been trusted to govern. Hayes argues that the public's failure to trust the federal government, corporate America, and the media has led to a crisis of authority that threatens to engulf not just our politics but our day-to-day lives.
Upending well-worn ideological and partisan categories, Hayes entirely reorients our perspective on our times. Twilight of the Elites is the defining work of social criticism for the post-bailout age.
Identify Books Toward Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
| Original Title: | Twilight of the Elites |
| ISBN: | 0307720454 (ISBN13: 9780307720450) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Nonfiction (2012) |
Rating Of Books Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
Ratings: 4 From 5545 Users | 613 ReviewsPiece Of Books Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
I love Chris. I love that he is intelligent and that he has a forum. I love that he does excellent and accurate research.But I dislike books like this. He is making an argument either without the 'deep history' he is claiming to know, or this is truly how he sees things: unique to the present time, the elite lately are so corrupt and separated from the rest of us, and feel so superior to us, that we common people are waking up to their power and authority for the first time and we areI'm a humble book blogger who happens to be addicted to politics and public policy almost as much as I am to reading. I will never claim to be a policy wonk or to know everything there is to know about the way our government works, but I think I stay abreast more than most. I wish I had the time or made a different career choice when I was in college, but I learn what I can, pay attention to what is being debated, and really try to analyze the way I think about a given topic or situation. Now
4.5 stars! I won Christopher Hayes' Twilight of the Elites as a Goodreads First Reads giveaway a few weeks before its publication on June 12. My copy has about forty pages less than the official hardcover copies are advertised to have. The "acknowledgements" section is blank, so hopefully that's all I'm missing! Hayes begins Twilight of the Elites with the example of his own alma mater, Hunter High School in New York, and how admission to the school depends on a single merit-based test. Seems
The main thesis of the book relies on a weird definition of meritocracy. According to Hayes, we have a problem in this country because the meritocracy system selects for incompetent people to be in charge of everything. This is not logical; if the people are incompetent, then by definition they do not deserve to be in the positions that they hold. So the issue is not that we have meritocracy; the issue is that we do NOT have a meritocracy. Or, that the meritocracy we are supposed to have is
I wish this book was written at a fifth grade level. As it is, it's comically, absurdly well written, with a staggeringly glorious diction. If you watch Hayes' show, you know that diction isn't affected - it rolls off his tongue in the expository segments of his show as easily as it does in this book. Which I love, and I find very satisfying. And yet, that selfsame diction makes his very important points less accessible to precisely the people who need to understand them. Like most books that
This book with its Nietzschean sounding title ("Twilight of the Idols") is an intriguing read and goes on to deliver a better understanding as to the essence of the great divide between classes on the American political landscape. Hayes is articulate and ties together many observations that he has gathered from other intellects. At times, I wanted more of his original thinking and less of what others had said. There's quite a bit of recent historical catalog here and Hayes sees clearly the
Chris Hayes' Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy is a critical look at one of the most basic and taken for granted aspects of American society: the meritocracy. Second-nature to most of us, meritocracy is the idea that the best and the brightest among us should rise to the top. That pulling oneself up by ones bootstraps is possible, that the elite have earned their place, and that everyone has that opportunity. Ironically, this distinctly American ideal was first defined by an
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