norb reviewed Why Nothing Works by Marvin Harris (A Touchstone book)
Still Relavent After 40 Years
5 stars
This book absolutely blew me away. I got it on a whim from an offhand comment I read somewhere online (had to request it from a library in another city, even). I wasn't expecting much, and honestly thought I'd just be reading a bunch of antiquated anthropological ideas from 1980, but I couldn't have been more wrong!
The ideas presented in this book share a web of events in post-WWII United States that led to what Harris describes as a somewhat broken society. His arguments were well thought out and researched (extensive citations are provided). The way he combines business consolidation/conglomeration, the feminist movement, the gay right movement, cults, and a lot of other ideas into one cohesive argument for why things were the way they were in 1980 was eye opening.
The most impressive part of all of it was how relevant his observations are here in 2023! 40 …
This book absolutely blew me away. I got it on a whim from an offhand comment I read somewhere online (had to request it from a library in another city, even). I wasn't expecting much, and honestly thought I'd just be reading a bunch of antiquated anthropological ideas from 1980, but I couldn't have been more wrong!
The ideas presented in this book share a web of events in post-WWII United States that led to what Harris describes as a somewhat broken society. His arguments were well thought out and researched (extensive citations are provided). The way he combines business consolidation/conglomeration, the feminist movement, the gay right movement, cults, and a lot of other ideas into one cohesive argument for why things were the way they were in 1980 was eye opening.
The most impressive part of all of it was how relevant his observations are here in 2023! 40 years later and we've not learned enough (or maybe, more to the unstated point of the book, things haven't gotten bad enough yet) for us to make large changes to the way our society operates.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone that wants a bit of a history lesson on why we seem to be stuck spinning our wheels in society today.