The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future [Hardcover]

Juan Enriquez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 22, 2005

Can a country be like a marriage that has run out of cash and steam, resulting in the inevitable frank discussions about just who is pulling his or her own weight? Eventually, even those who love each other sometimes conclude they cannot stay together.

Juan Enriquez’s unique insights into the financial, political, and cultural issues we face will provoke shock and surprise and lead you to ask the question no one has yet put on the table: Could “becoming untied” ever happen here? It’s a question made especially relevant when we are faced with such unpromising facts as:

• At no other time have we had the unwelcome convergence in which the three key sectors of business, government, and consumers are so tapped out due to debt that each lacks the financial wherewithal to come to the rescue of the others.

• Most assets are not being used for productive purposes but for speculation, resulting in people lacking incentives to create real wealth, focusing instead on buying, selling, and flipping real estate.

• As religion starts to mix with politics, we have a culture that allows us to fall behind what were previously third world nations, because we are now treating science the way we did sex in the 1950s, banning or burying evolution theories and research into promising lifesaving areas such as stem-cell research.

When the enemy was outside—for example, the threat perceived when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and people feared America would lose the brain race—we rallied. Now the enemy is within, and we polarize. Defaming the legitimacy of people on the “other” side becomes the currency of the day, where people in blue states are seen as godless liberal elitists and those in red states are seen as, well, rednecks.

Citizenship, Enriquez says, is like buying into a national brand. If the brand promises one thing and delivers another, could it then have the same fate as a tired product on a supermarket shelf, eroding, losing support, even disappearing? Countries, even one as powerful and successful as America, live on fault lines. When a fault line splits, it’s near impossible to put things back together again. What America will look like in fifty years depends on what we do today to act on the issues raised in The Untied States of America.


Also available as an eBook

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Will America always fly the Stars and Stripes? Will its borders be the same in 50 years? It may sound crazy, but the answers to those questions are less certain than most Americans probably think. History shows flags and borders change frequently. Countries are like marriages--they fall apart all the time. Three-quarters of the countries in the United Nations were not there 50 years ago. In his book The Untied States of America, Juan Enriquez chucks out conventional wisdom and says the U.S. may not be immune to mounting global forces of national dissolution. He argues that Americans should get ready now for a messy, secession-driven future.

Enriquez is a former Mexican government official and fellow at Harvard's Center for International Affairs. He says growing political, racial, and economic divisions in the U.S. could provoke secessionist movements in the South and New England. It has happened before. Enriquez points to the Philippines, which gained independence from the U.S. in 1946. In Texas, he writes, 42 percent of people support secession and a confederation with the U.S. Unfortunately, while Enriquez addresses an important topic, his writing style is sensationalistic and plays loose with some facts. (For example, he claims that the Canadian province of Quebec bans toys that use a language other than French--not true--and that 94 percent of Quebec voters rejected independence for the province in a 1995 referendum; the correct number is 51 percent.) Enriquez also employs a distracting and jarring presentation style: He rarely writes a paragraph longer than one sentence, and each page is a cacophony of bolded and capitalized words and varying font sizes, a provocative choice that in this case comes off as strange and amateurish. --Alex Roslin

From Publishers Weekly

American history, both distant and recent, is troubled with violence and schisms that constantly threaten the foundations of the country. The country has endured a civil war, two world wars, slavery, genocide and now, of course, the raging battle between the red and blue states. Are we on the brink of dissolution? That's the question Enriquez poses in this fact-filled, statistic-laden book. For more than 200 pages, Enriquez, the founding director of the Life Sciences Project at Harvard Business School, gives readers as many reasons as he can for why America may be headed toward an un-united future. On occasion this means glossing over pesky details and relying on simple generalizations, such as lumping together various quotes about the deficit and social security to maximize the sense of impending doom. Enriquez skips from topic to topic, relying on the fractured narrative layout (perhaps deliberately reminiscent of essayist Paul Metcalf's work) to heighten the book's sense of urgency. The facts, dates and numbers he presents are undoubtedly interesting, but in the end they don't add up to much. What's lacking is the complexity and depth that come with focused, developed arguments, the kind that provide a meaningful context for statistical information. (On sale Nov. 15)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Crown (November 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307237524
• ISBN-13: 978-0307237521
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,010,453 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Content and Format, January 25, 2006

By 

DCArchitect (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future (Hardcover)

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book isn't even what's printed on the page - it's HOW its printed on the page. There are no paragraphs. The entire work is an assembly of short declaratory sentences (or less) arranged, spaced, and sized for maximum impact. Charts and graphs abound. It is clear that the author conceived the entire page, not just his words. This probably bothers some people (it certainly did for at least one reviewer on Amazon.com) but I find it not just readable but incredibly informative, cluing the reader in to the author's ideas about what's important and how certain concepts mesh together or can be juxtaposed for power and insight.

If you cannot accept this format (as is the case with a few of the other reviewers) the book will drive you crazy. If you can get past it, though, reading it is a very enjoyable experience.

The book opens with and revolves around the very thought provoking question, "How many stars with the U.S. flag have in 50 years?" Most Americans would respond "fifty, of course" without any thought. Mr. Enriquez spends the remainder of the book providing insightful examples of how other countries have 'untied' (his term for the breakup of a nation into smaller, independent parts) and lines along which and reasons for the U.S. to 'untie.'

He covers portions of our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, that could under certain circumstances become 'new stars' for America. He also examines the reasons and trends that my induce portions of the United States to 'untie' - a loss of stars for the United States.

The 'Blue State vs. Red State' divide is examined. The author observes that when populations within a nation become sufficiently self identifying and unintegrated, splits often occur, but not in the way that might seem most likely. Given that The South has already seceded once and makes up a significant part of 'Red America' one would think it most likely for the 'Red States' to secede again. Mr. Enriquez contends that this isn't the case. Most secessions are by the more eoonomically viable portion. When a population or region becomes convinced that the could be richer by themselves, they secede. Knowledge based economies alow smaller nations (cough, cough, South Korea, cough) to easily compete with far larger nations. Shedding regions that don't 'pull their weight' becomes an increasingly attractive option.

Mr. Enriquez does not, however, spend the entire book examining the United States. Italy, Canada, the Balkans, The UK and Russia, among many others, are also used to illustrate concepts.

I highly recommend this book, regardless of your political stripes. It is neither Conservative propoganda nor Progressive talking points. It explores trends that are unfolding all over the world and explains how they will affect us.

See my full review [...]

28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent summary of disturbing trends, December 14, 2005

By 

H. F. Gibbard "Noir Guy" (Dark City, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future (Hardcover)

In this snappy, fast-paced but deeply-thought-out book, Juan Enriquez challenges our assumptions about the future stability of the United States and the entire surrounding region. Will the U.S. flag still have fifty stars fifty years from now? Will some regions secede, or others seek to join the USA and become new states? What trends are tearing this country apart, and what trends in other nearby nations such as Canada, Mexico and certain U.S. protectorates might make them fracture, with parts of what are now sovereign nations throwing in their lot with the United States?

Enriquez identifies disturbing socioeconomic trends within this country that tend toward disunion. Some states receive far more from the United States treasury than they pay in. These are generally "blue" states with a large tax base. Other states are takers; these are generally "red" states in the arid west. Racial divides, including the tremendous influx of Hispanic migrants and the increasing power of Indian tribes as sovereign nations, accentuate the problem. Religiously divided Americans no longer speak a common "language" based on common metaphysical assumptions. As an earlier work on this topic, "The Nine Nations of North America" pointed out, this enormous country in which we live is really a confederation of a great many regional interests. Whether we can continue to view it as our common interest to "buy the American brand" and maintain a common identity is an open question.

Enriquez makes the book entertaining by using a variety of typefaces, photographs, and quotes to make his point. It reads like a website converted into a book. But don't let the quick read fool you. There is a lot here to think about.

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Just Another Book on Politics, December 2, 2005

By 

Chamberlain (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future (Hardcover)

A professor I know here at school once described Juan Enriquez's writing as "part e. e. cummings, part html." It's true. I just got this and it kept me up through the night. If you've ever thought that there's more to the red state/blue state divide than just presidential elections, or if you've ever thought there's more common culture between western Canada and California than between California and the Carolinas, or if you ever have wondered about the potential of a north-south "nation" of Spanish speakers on the American continent(s), this book will keep you up too. Oh, and did you know the United States almost acquired a large portion of Mexico as part of the Mexican bailout of the mid-90s?