The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream (Hardcover)

by John Zogby (Author)
Key Phrases: watchmaker god, private generation, youngest voters, First Globals, United States, Wal Mart (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Renowned political pollster Zogby distills a lifetime of surveying public opinion into a provocative—and heartening—portrait of American attitudes toward a host of topical issues that will shock cynics who regularly pronounce on the nation's divisions, apathy and appetite for excess. The bullshit era is over and done, Zogby notes; his surveys reveal a public craving for truth rather than hype, valuing thrift over luxury and ready to accept limits on consumption. A New American Consensus is emerging, according to the author; shared economic hardships are uniting people commonly perceived to be at odds, and self-defined identities such as investor are becoming more reliable predictors of worldviews than race or gender. The author reserves particular enthusiasm for the younger generation, whose responses reveal an unprecedented embrace of diversity, sensitivity to global human rights and a willingness to grapple with complex issues—such as abortion—free from orthodoxy and with a desire to find middle ground. The American Century is over, Zogby declares, and the Whole Earth Century has begun; his intriguing claims will likely stimulate hope and continued debate. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Steve Weinberg

Dismissing a crystal-ball book by a professional pollster would be easy. After all, generalizing about a diverse nation of 300 million people based on samples of just a few hundred seems ludicrous.

But pollster John Zogby's voice in The Way We'll Be is disarming. He anticipates skepticism and answers potential arguments with a combination of intelligent rebuttal, winning modesty and full disclosure about the limits of his methodology.

What he describes seems a plausible (though not guaranteed) scenario for the future of the United States, its politics, culture and economics. Even if Zogby's conclusions prove to be mistaken, the data he has collected offer plenty of fodder for discussion.

Drawing on surveys he conducted over a 20-year period, Zogby analyzed responses from all age and demographic groups. What he found was surprisingly optimistic: reason for uplift amid job layoffs, inadequate health care, rising gasoline prices, global warming and other morale-sapping problems. "My surveying shows that we are in the middle of a fundamental reorientation of the American character," he writes, "away from wanton consumption and toward a new global citizenry in an age of limited resources."

I like the sound of that new world. But I could not shake the thought that maybe Zogby is interpreting data to fit his personal hopes. Or maybe people tend to offer answers that sound politically correct and comport with what they believe pollsters want to hear.

Cued by Zogby's hopeful interpretation, I vowed to look for holes in his analysis, as well as flaws in the premises and phrasings of his questions. But as Zogby works through his data, sprinkling his pages with statistical tables, the vision in his crystal ball seems to hold.

He comes across as justifiably confident when writing that significant numbers of Americans "are less interested in luxury and extravagance than in comfort, convenience, costs, and the dictates of a growing global consciousness." For example, when asked what values were important in their consumer decisions, 51 percent of women responding mentioned the exploitation of child labor, 44 percent cited environmental friendliness, and 37 percent mentioned the human rights record of the producer. Armed with such replies, Zogby confidently states that "Americans want to live in a world with other people, not in a walled empire surrounded by enemies."

At the center of this optimistic future is a group he labels the "First Globals," consisting of the current 18- to 29-year-olds across the United States. This group, he finds, is "the most outward-looking and accepting generation in American history." Yes, many of them are self-absorbed and materialistic. But, Zogby says, the majority of First Globals are "far more likely than their elders to accept gays and lesbians. For all practical purposes, they're the first color-blind Americans and the first to bring a consistently global perspective to everything from foreign policy to environmental issues to the coffee they buy, the music they listen to and the clothes they wear."

And they feel far more connected personally to the rest of the world. They expect to travel to exotic locales such as Cape Town and Dubai. "A quarter of them think they'll end up living for some significant period in a country other than America," Zogby notes. When asked about the propriety of "an imperialist power that acts on its own regardless of what the rest of the world thinks," 86 percent of First Globals labeled such conduct "improper/somewhat improper"; only 3 percent considered it "somewhat proper/proper." No other demographic group in his study "had a greater spread between the two extremes," Zogby comments. These responses signify the group's determination "to find a middle ground on the hot-button issues of the day."

Such a data-laden book could be boring, but Zogby laces it with amusing anecdotes throughout. In one, he recounts a conversation with a 20-year-old restaurant worker in Utica, N.Y., about her concept of personal privacy in the new YouTube world:

"I asked our waitress about her own limits on what she would reveal," Zogby reports.

" 'My boobs,' she answered, not terribly demurely, 'but only on Halloween, and only for my friends.' "

Zogby replied, "Well, I'm your friend today, but tomorrow I might not be. Can you stop me from sharing your, um, breasts with the rest of the world, or with the company you're hoping will hire you?"

"No," countered the server, "but so many of us do this in one form or another that employers are just going to have to adjust or they won't have anyone left to hire."

As the server moved to another table, Zogby recalled thinking, "What's bad for beauty queens and teenage ingénues today becomes business as usual the day after tomorrow."

Zogby also believes that young people, "so willing to share even intimate details with a global community" over the Internet, will become increasingly multilateralist in their worldview. That change alone won't bring about a perfect world, of course, but it is bound to improve upon the nationalism that for so many years sparked conflict and war.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Random House (August 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400064503
• ISBN-13: 978-1400064502
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #116,047 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #4 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Communication > Public Opinion
  #66 in	Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Consumer Behavior

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading - especially if you're a marketer, August 14, 2008

By	Susanna Hutcheson "Copywriting for the Discri... (Midwest U.S.A.) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

John Zogby is by far one of the most respected and prolific pollsters and chroniclers of social changes and sensibilities of our time.

In his new book "The Way We'll Be" he says that people want more than ever to be treated as individuals. He says they also want variety in the products they purchase. "They want choice, not imposition, and they are demanding to be treated as individuals," he says. I'm not sure this in and of itself is real news. But if you market to other people, it's certainly something you should know and understand. Only when you understand what people want can you successfully sell to them.

He also says that people are willing to settle for less. "Narrowing limits", he calls this attitude.

The one problem I found with the book was that the author seems to deal mostly about the current state of things and not as much about the future as you would expect. Of course, one call tell a lot about the future by the past.

What I found useful about the book is that it tells us about the consumer and the people we deal with daily. As a marketer, this information is valuable. Indeed, it is priceless. Just as politicians needs to know what motivates people, those who sell to people need to know their motivations as well.

While the book fails to tell us exactly what we might expect in the future (if that were even possible) in the way Alvin Toffler did, it is certainly a worthwhile book and one that I highly recommend.

- Susanna K. Hutcheson

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating look into the American psyche, August 25, 2008

By	Alan A. Elsner "Alan Elsner, author" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the second book I have read in the past month by a political pollster. The first, "Words that Work," by Frank Luntz, was a cynical look at how polling can help corporations and politicians paint themselves in the most flattering light and bamboozle a helpless public. John Zogby's book could not be more different. It is a deep, exhaustive look at some of the insights he has gained through decades of polling about the state of the American psyche, what people value, want they hope for and where they would like the country and their own lives to go.
Full disclosure: I worked with the author of this book for many years on political polls he conducted when I was chief political correspondent for Reuters. Obviously, I valued that partnership -- but this book is not primarily about politics. It is a kind of "State of the Union Address" and is by turns amusing, revealing and often surprising.
Zogby's deepest insight is his proposition that there exists in our nation a vast group of Americans he calls "secular spiritualists" -- people craving meaning in their lives. Some find it through religion, but many look for spiritual sustenanance outside of organized churches. They want material comfort and security for themselves and their families, of course, but they also want to leave the world a better place than they found it; they crave emotional fulfillment and they are remarkably tolerant of ther races, religions and cultures. Unfortunately, politicians have completely failed to address these desires, preferring to fall back on unbridled negativity (as seen in this year's presidential campaign).
Americans, Zogby says, want an ethical government, ethical corporations and ethical leaders. Young Americans, who Zogby calls "First Globals," see themselves as citizens of the world as well of their own country, and are deeply committed to preserving its future.
I recommend this book for its fascinating insights into where our country may be heading in the next 10 or 20 years.
For more on me and my books including The Nazi Hunter: A Novelgo to www.alanelsner.com.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poll Answer Trends Extrapolated into Future Life Styles and Attitudes, September 18, 2008

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Naturally, you would expect a pollster to take poll answers and try to use them to predict the future: That's how pollsters make a living. Interestingly, their predictions quickly fall apart when the future is more than a few days away. That should be a hint that polls are a weak basis for looking at longer-term trends.

If you had polled teenagers in the sixties, you would have extrapolated their poll answers into having a country filled with wild livers among the following generations.

Each person is formed by events, reactions to events, the passage of time, and learning. Poll answers are a result of those formative influences. If Mr. Zogby can learn how to predict those influencers, then poll answers might have more value.

This book will mostly be of interest to those who don't know very much about how young people think about today's burning questions. If you are a young person, I doubt if you will learn very much except about how polls and poll interpretations are created. If you have young people in your family, you also know what's going on. If you are older and don't have much contact with younger people, you will probably think this is a three or four star book.

I also found lots of little errors in the book that made me wonder how careful a pollster Mr. Zogby is. One of my favorites was a sentence describing how those who were born during World War II were affected by their experiences during the Depression. Hmm. I guess the effects of the outside world on yet-to-be-conceived children are much stronger than I realized.

This was a hard book for me to finish. When I was done, I didn't feel like it was worth the effort.