Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 Book

Coming Apart explores an evolution in American society that has taken place over the past 50 years, leading to the formation of American classes that are different in kind and in their degree of separation from anything we have ever known. In a stunning rebuke of "feel good" social science such as The Social Animal and Stumbling on Happiness, Coming Apart argues that where you come from correlates strongly with how you will achieve. The book demonstrates that the paths of social mobility that made America great are becoming sclerotic and that the upper, elite class is becoming more and more isolated while the white underclass grows in size and resentment. Drawing on decades of statistics and research, and reminiscent of other societal cross-sections like Bobos in Paradise and Bowling Alone, Coming Apart examines how class tension could lead to class warfare and the end of the American project. A startling long-lens view, Coming Apart shows how class--not race or ethnicity--is putting the great tensions on the seams of American society.