Book Review: How America Works...And Why It Doesn't

Americans in the twenty-first century are becoming increasingly untethered from both reality and the essential principles and traditions that have shaped the nation’s historic success. A big part of why America isn’t working is because far too many Americans neither know nor care how it’s supposed to work.

This book explains key aspects of recent US political history to give the background to recent, dangerous developments, including how political groups have reshaped since the 1964 Civil Rights Act; the rise of Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party; the profound impact of the internet and social media; and the threats posed to the electoral system by the growth of extreme polarization and growing irrationality.

How America Works... And Why It Doesn't by William Cooper was published on July 23, 2024, from Ad Lib Publishers.

Cooper is someone I connected with via Goodreads a few years back; he provided me a digital copy of his book for me to review. Reading this on the eve of the 2024 Election was very timely indeed.

Back in my undergraduate days of college, the seniors at our school over a two-year period all had to take the same Senior Seminar course wherein everyone, despite, their major, had one common point of study to which they could relate. I thought it was an interesting thing for a school with so many technical majors to do. For my senior year, the course focused on the US Constitution. For ten weeks, we studied and discussed this important foundation of American government.

I appreciate that Cooper went brief on the first half of the book (the foundations of our government is to work). He sticks to facts with minimal opinion and commentary. That is a good way to lay the groundwork and not spend a lot of time retreading things most folks should have learned in their high school civics classes.

The arguments as to why things don't work also ring very true. I have seen the growing tribalism and the effects of social media in action over the last dozen years of election cycles. A reader with an open mind will certainly appreciate the discussion.