The Big Sort, Bill Bishop
The Big Sort, Bill Bishop
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The Big Sort
Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart

Author: Bill Bishop

Narrator: Graham Halstead

Unabridged: 12 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 10/15/2024

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

The untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided
America may be more diverse than ever coast to coast, but the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote as we do. This social transformation didn't happed by accident. We’ve built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood -- and religion and news show -- most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don’t know and can’t understand those who live just a few miles away. The reason for this situation, and the dire implications for our country, is the subject of this groundbreaking work.
In 2004, the journalist Bill Bishop, armed with original and startling demographic data, made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into alarmingly homogeneous communities -- not by region or by red state or blue state, but by city and even neighborhood. In The Big Sort, Bishop deepens his analysis in a brilliantly reported book that makes its case from the ground up, starting with stories about how we live today and then drawing on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.
The Big Sort will draw comparisons to Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class and will redefine the way Americans think about themselves for decades to come.Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

About Bill Bishop

BILL BISHOP was a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman when he began research on city growth and political polarization with the sociologist and statistician Robert Cushing. Bishop has worked as a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, and, with his wife, owned and operated the Bastrop County Times, a weekly newspaper in Smithville, Texas. He lives in Austin.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Aaron on July 20, 2008

Call it the "Election 2000" riddle: How is it that the country can be so fatally, psychotically split between the two irreconcilable extremes of Bush and Gore when everyone I know - literally everyone - is a Gore supporter except for my grandparents in Kerrville, TX, who took the Hobbit away from me......more

Goodreads review by Alan on November 14, 2013

Maybe because it's part of my job to understand how people think or what drives them to make certain decisions that The Big Sort has had such a big impact on my thinking. Its thesis, in brief, is this: Since the 1970s, tens of millions of Americans have packed up and moved, largely for jobs. And when......more

Goodreads review by Bryan on August 27, 2017

In my work exploring the future of education and technology I keep researching social, economic, and cultural trends. One part of that involves investigating what happened to both American education and society since 1975 or so, after the generation when we rebuilt higher ed. In that world The Bi......more

Goodreads review by Paige on January 31, 2021

For the past forty years (since the 1970s) the US population has been sorting and segregating and clustering in zip codes of people like them in terms of SES and political orientation and lifestyle. This is due to greater mobility more free movement and choices in housing and neighborhood. And what......more

Goodreads review by Stetson on May 08, 2023

The Big Sort (2008) by Bill Bishop examines the trend of political and ideological segregation in American society, i.e. affinity clustering. Bishop's presents several lines of empirical evidence alongside anecdotal commentary that suggests that Americans are increasingly clustering themselves away......more