Present Books During 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) |
Christopher L. Hayes
Hardcover | Pages: 304 pages Rating: 4 | 5545 Users | 613 Reviews
Describe Epithetical 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 | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 304 pages |
| Published | : | June 12th 2012 by Crown |
| Categories | : | Politics. Nonfiction. Economics. History. Sociology |
Rendition Toward 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.
Rating Epithetical Books Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
Ratings: 4 From 5545 Users | 613 ReviewsPiece Epithetical Books Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
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 theChris Hayes is not only the host of MSNBC's All In, a civil and intelligent political talk show. He is also the author of Twilight of the Elites, a timely and persuasive book which may--at least in part--explain the surprising victory of Donald Trump. In it, Hayes argues that the very concept of meritocracy is flawed, and that its failure is in part responsible for our growing disillusionment with society's institutions. Each meritocratic elite will devise a host of ways to maintain its
I decided to read this book after reading Bills review here - http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...I really enjoyed this book and found it really useful. A discussion of education forms a large part of the start of the book, education being, supposedly, the main entry card into the meritocracy. He talks about his own high school, one that has an entrance test to ensure the children who get to go to this school are deserving. What is interesting is that over the years fewer and fewer Black or
TWILIGHT OF THE ELITES is a reaction to the collapse in American institutions, and in American faith in their own institutions. Hayes cites a number of examples in his book: the bipartisan failure that was the war in Iraq, the subprime loan crisis that crashed the world economy, the decades-long global coverup of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, the steroids scandal in Major League Baseball, and the Enron scandal. Since this was published, other examples could be cited: the epidemic of
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 are
Hayes's book brilliantly shows how seemingly separate strands of society are united in the way they depend on meritocracy--that the best and brightest, the elite, ought to run the country, the economy, education, religious life, and more. A meritocracy depends on two principles, according to Hayes: the Principle of Difference, the fact that there are differences in ability, and that we should allow a natural hierarchy to emerge in which the hardest working and most talented be given the hardest,
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
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