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Charles Murray

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 Paperback – Illustrated, January 29, 2013

by Charles Murray (Author)

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A fascinating explanation for why white America has become fractured and divided in education and class, from the acclaimed author of Human Diversity.

“I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.”—David Brooks, New York Times

In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.

Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship—divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.

The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk.

The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America.

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Crown Forum
Publication date

January 29, 2013
Dimensions

5.19 x 0.9 x 7.96 inches
ISBN-10

030745343X
ISBN-13

978-0307453433
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Mr. Murray's sobering portrait is of a nation where millions of people are losing touch with the founding virtues that have long lent American lives purpose, direction and happiness.”—W. Bradford Wilcox, The Wall Street Journal

“Coming Apart brims with ideas about what ails America."—The Economist

“A timely investigation into a worsening class divide no one can afford to ignore.”—Publishers Weekly

“[Charles Murray] argues for the need to focus on what has made the U.S. exceptional beyond its wealth and military power . . . religion, marriage, industriousness, and morality.”—Booklist (starred review)

“[Charles Murray] has written an incisive, alarming, and hugely frustrating book about the state of American society.”—Roger Lowenstein, Bloomberg Businessweek

About the Author

Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He first came to national attention in 1984 with Losing Ground. His subsequent books include In Pursuit, The Bell Curve (with Richard J. Herrnstein), What It Means to Be a Libertarian, Human Accomplishment, In Our Hands, and Real Education. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives with his wife in Burkittsville, Maryland.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Our Kind of People

In which is described the emergence of a new and distinctive culture among a highly influential segment of American society.

ON SEPTEMBER 29, 1987, ABC premiered an hour-long dramatic series with the cryptic title thirtysomething. The opening scene is set in a bar. Not a Cheers bar, where Cliff the mailman perches on a bar stool alongside Norm the accountant and Frasier the psychiatrist, but an airy room, perhaps attached to a restaurant, with sunlight streaming in through paned windows onto off-white walls.

The room is crowded with an upscale clientele gathered for drinks after work, nattily uniformed servers moving among them. Two women in their late twenties or early thirties wearing tailored business outfits are seated at a table. A vase with a minimalist arrangement of irises and forsythia is visible in the background. On the table in front of the women are their drinks- both of them wine, served in classic long-stemmed glasses. Nary a peanut or a pretzel is in sight. One of the women is talking about a man she has started dating. He is attractive, funny, good in bed, she says, but there's a problem: He wears polyester shirts. "Am I allowed to have a relationship with someone who wears polyester shirts?" she asks.

She is Hope Murdoch, the female protagonist. She ends up marrying the man who wore the polyester shirts, who is sartorially correct by the time we see him. Hope went to Princeton. She is a writer who put a promising career on hold when she had a baby. He is Michael Steadman, one of two partners in a fledgling advertising agency in Philadelphia. He went to the University of Pennsylvania (the Ivy League one). Hope and Michael live with their seven-month-old daughter in an apartment with high ceilings, old-fashioned woodwork, and etched-glass windows. Grad-school-like bookcases are untidily crammed with books. An Art Deco poster is on the wall. A Native American blanket is draped over the top of the sofa.

In the remaining forty-five minutes, we get dialogue that includes a reference to left brain/right brain differences and an exchange about evolutionary sexual selection that begins, "You've got a bunch of Australopithecines out on the savanna, right?" The Steadmans buy a $278 baby stroller (1987 dollars). Michael shops for new backpacking gear at a high-end outdoors store, probably REI. No one wears suits at the office. Michael's best friend is a professor at Haverford. Hope breast-feeds her baby in a fashionable restaurant. Hope can't find a babysitter. Three of the four candidates she interviews are too stupid to be left with her child and the other is too Teutonic. Hope refuses to spend a night away from the baby ("I have to be available to her all the time"). Michael drives a car so cool that I couldn't identify the make. All this, in just the first episode.

The culture depicted in thirtysomething had no precedent, with its characters who were educated at elite schools, who discussed intellectually esoteric subjects, and whose sex lives were emotionally complicated and therefore needed to be talked about. The male leads in thirtysomething were on their way up through flair and creativity, not by being organization men. The female leads were conflicted about motherhood and yet obsessively devoted to being state-of-the-art moms. The characters all possessed a sensibility that shuddered equally at Fords and Cadillacs, ranch homes in the suburbs and ponderous mansions, Budweiser and Chivas Regal.

In the years to come, America would get other glimpses of this culture in Mad About You, Ally McBeal, Frasier, and The West Wing, among others, but no show ever focused with the same laser intensity on the culture that thirtysomething depicted-understandably, because the people who live in that culture do not make up much of the audience for network television series, and those who are the core demographic for network television series are not particularly fond of the culture that thirtysomething portrayed. It was the emerging culture of the new upper class.

Let us once again return to November 21, 1963, and try to find its counterpart.

The Baseline

The World of the Upper-Middle Class

Two conditions have to be met before a subculture can spring up within a mainstream culture. First, a sufficient number of people have to possess a distinctive set of tastes and preferences. Second, they have to be able to get together and form a critical mass large enough to shape the local scene. The Amish have managed to do it by achieving local dominance in selected rural areas. In 1963, other kinds of subcultures also existed in parts of the country. Then as now, America's major cities had distinctive urban styles, and so did regions such as Southern California, the Midwest, and the South. But in 1963 there was still no critical mass of the people who would later be called symbolic analysts, the educated class, the creative class, or the cognitive elite.

In the first place, not enough people had college educations to form a critical mass of people with the distinctive tastes and preferences fostered by advanced education. In the American adult population as a whole, just 8 percent had college degrees. Even in neighborhoods filled with managers and professionals, people with college degrees were a minority- just 32 percent of people in those jobs had college degrees in 1963. Only a dozen census tracts in the entire nation had adult populations in which more than 50 percent of the adults had college degrees, and all of them were on or near college campuses.

In the second place, affluence in 1963 meant enough money to afford a somewhat higher standard of living than other people, not a markedly different lifestyle. In 1963, the median family income of people working in managerial occupations and the professions was only $61,500 (2010 dollars, as are all dollar figures from now on). Fewer than 5 percent of American families in 1963 had incomes of $100,000 or more, and fewer than half of 1 percent had incomes of $200,000 or more.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown Forum; Illustrated edition (January 29, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 030745343X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307453433
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.19 x 0.9 x 7.96 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #62,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #138 in Sociology of Class
- #143 in Christian Business & Professional Growth
- #255 in History of Christianity (Books)

Customer Reviews:
987 ratings

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Charles Murray

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Charles Murray is a political scientist, author, and libertarian. He first came to national attention in 1984 with the publication of "Losing Ground," which has been credited as the intellectual foundation for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. His 1994 New York Times bestseller, "The Bell Curve" (Free Press, 1994), coauthored with the late Richard J. Herrnstein, sparked heated controversy for its analysis of the role of IQ in shaping America's class structure. Murray's other books include "What It Means to Be a Libertarian" (1997), "Human Accomplishment" (2003), "In Our Hands" (2006), and "Real Education" (2008). His 2012 book, "Coming Apart" (Crown Forum, 2012), describes an unprecedented divergence in American classes over the last half century. His most recent book is "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission" (Crown Forum, 2015).

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Dave Todaro

Charles Murray’s 2012 Dismantling of American Culture and Society is Still a Pertinent Read

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2016

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Charles Murray provides a data-driven report on how white America’s changing faithfulness to what he calls the United States’ four founding virtues: Religiosity, Marriage, Industriousness and Honesty, has changed the fabric of American society since 1960.

Having read this book over a period of a few weeks on either side of the 2016 presidential election that has brought Donald Trump within six weeks (as of this review) of the Oval Office, I saw how anyone with Murray’s perspective could have predicted how the vote would be split along lines of geography, education, and income. “Coming Apart” remains a highly relevant read to those with the patience to work through some fairly dense material about why America is what it is today.

Murray views the four founding virtues mentioned above as the basis of “American exceptionalism,” a phrase he uses to summarize how America is different from (not necessarily better than) any other country. That said, Murray’s veneration of the four founding virtues and their role in the success of the American experiment over many generations – is clear. So too, is his fear of America ending its experiment with a government that allows people to define and pursue their own happiness, rather than defining it for them. That, in Murray's view, would result in the United States becoming unexceptional among nations.

The book is not for someone in search of a canned ideology or a casual read. Murray marshals much sociological data, and observations of 19th-century sociologists about how Americans used to be, in support of his conclusions and prognosis for whether the American Experiment can continue. Readers will need to focus to absorb it.

Murray’s thesis regarding the American educational system as a people-sorting mechanism that helps to self-perpetuate a new stratification of citizens into the current elite class, is cogent and fascinating. Add data showing that smart, well-educated kids come from smart, well-educated parents, and you have the rise of new American ruling families. They are a scant percentage of our total population. They lead us yet they have, in many ways, lost touch with us. Murray offers a somewhat amusing, yet thought-provoking quiz to help you understand how much you have in common with the elites who have isolated themselves, in many ways, from the other 98% of Americans.

Murray’s analysis of what has happened to working-class white America’s adherence to the four founding virtues from 1960-2010, is sobering. And, Murray sees the subtle abandonment of these principles among the new elite class as well; an abandonment of commitment if not yet in behavior.

The final chapter contains a critique of socialist (European-style) democracy that, while worded kindly, contains powerful insights as to why such a system, however well-meaning, would represent a serious blow to the United States’ status as a place that promotes the pursuit of happiness. Those who are just interested in getting an overview of Murray’s thought, might skip ahead to read this chapter.

The author brightens his prognosis for America by recalling the American tradition of rising to the difficult occasion. He awaits a new, secular “Great Awakening.” This makes me consider millennials, and their well-chronicled focus on serving others and seeking out meaningful lives. Perhaps America’s greatest hope to retain its exceptionalism – no, make that its distinctiveness among the nations – are the children and grandchildren of my generation who may find their meaning and call to service within the framework of the institutions of religion, family, vocation and fair play that the Founding Fathers had in mind. Some will find that formula trite; Murray might say that those people are making his point about abandonment of the four founding virtues, for him.

223 people found this helpful

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Tarheel fan

Data-driven observations on our changing society

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2017

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Charles Murray uses substantial, scientifically valid data to affirm the changes that have occurred in the American society over the past 50 years. When he details the increase in unwed mothers in the lower classes and why it has increased it seems so simple to understand. It is like a "that makes sense" moment. He does the same for honesty, integrity, work ethic, industriousness, religion, etc. This is a solid book that is not easy to read in the sense that information is powerful and requires your full attention in order to comprehend the material and you definitely will want to comprehend. It can get tedious in some parts but you have to understand all parts in order to appreciate the final chapters in which he projects the potential paths we may travel as our welfare state starts to implode. I was trained as a scientist and love authors who can explain social change with hard data. Murray does this amazingly well. This book is worth reading twice.

126 people found this helpful

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Tara Fox Hall

Everyone should read this book - go buy a copy now

Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2020

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I bought this because I wanted an explanation for the state of the world. I had well-off friends that seemed to have great lives with everything going well: good jobs, good marriages, good kids that went to college and themselves got good jobs, that collectively seemed very happy and satisfied with their lives, if not the state of politics. I also had friends where everything was falling apart: marriages unhappy, children in perpetual trouble, drugs and alcohol issues in their own lives or their immediate families, jobs that paid little and raises that still didn't bring them up to where they could afford a fraction of what my well-off friends could afford. And no hope that things would or could get batter for themselves or their children. This book gives a good explanation for what I was and am seeing, as well as a prompt for anyone who is succeeding in the world today: get involved with your neighbors, whether they are well-off or poor, and get involved with your communities, whether they are lively or a ghost town. And I don't mean by writing a check, I mean by sharing your time and actually spending time with people of a different class than you are. Only by all of the classes in America cooperating and understanding what the other side has to offer can our great country continue. We have to work together, and the change has to happen now.

23 people found this helpful

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Doc

like most people like me

Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2017

Verified Purchase

Worth your time. I am a liberal Democrat. I read The Bell Curve when it first came out and I was surprised at the vehement reaction. I kept the book prominent in my home just to shock my liberal friends. I picked this book up because, like most people like me, I'm concerned at the direction of my home. As was the case before, the data is compelling. But, I disagree with some of Murray's conclusions based on (biased?) carefully cultivated data. The big point for this poor boy from the South, is that our country has become increasingly stratified in a way that separates and isolates the cultures of the well to do in Beltown and the residents of Fishtown. If you are a liberal, please read the book. Yes, data may be selective, but you will be overwhelmed by the distance between the two tribes. Mr. Murray thinks that Fishtown community is moving towards an exploitation of the safety net and leaving the trait of industriousness. I suspect that the people in Fishtown are alienated by the dismissive attitude of the Beltownies and their complete ignorance of life in Fishtown. For another point of view, try on George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London.

36 people found this helpful

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Chris X

Very interesting study

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 18, 2020

Verified Purchase

Well worth a read

One person found this helpful

David Hugh-Jones

This was enjoyable and clearly argued, and I thought ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 20, 2017

Verified Purchase

This was enjoyable and clearly argued, and I thought it had a bit more of a clear thesis than Robert Putnam's Our Kids.

One person found this helpful

David Ryan

Gives good statistics and compelling spin on sociological changes in America ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 25, 2018

Verified Purchase

Interesting book. Gives good statistics and compelling spin on sociological changes in America which have clearly been overlooked

One person found this helpful

Alexander H

Very timely book, should be top of the reading list for every public servant

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 9, 2016

Verified Purchase

Excellent work. His central arguments are equally applicable here in the UK; see Brexit. Could have done with some demographic stats to give more weight to his observations on Europe.

One person found this helpful

Anton Fortein

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 19, 2015

Verified Purchase

recommended

2 people found this helpful

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