The Age of Entitlement

America Since the Sixties

By: Christopher Caldwell

Narrated by: Christopher Caldwell

Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

A major American intellectual and “one of the right’s most gifted and astute journalists” (The New York Times Book Review) makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled - and ready to put an adventurer in the White House.

Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences and his conclusion is this: Even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high - in wealth, freedom, and social stability - and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations.

Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half-century, taking you on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycontin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules.

Essential, timely, hard to put down, The Age of Entitlement “is an eloquent and bracing book, full of insight” (New York magazine) about how the reforms of the past 50 years gave the country two incompatible political systems - and drove it toward conflict.

©2020 Christopher Caldwell (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio

Thoughtful and well researched

Mr. Caldwell masterfully details the emergence of political correctness from the ever expanding interpretation of the Civil Rights Act. His prescient vision has been reinforced in the months since this book’s publication. One may not fully agree, however, it will expand and enhance a thoughtful dialogue.

fantastic book

Smart, well-written, well-spoken. It helps you to understand how the U.S. got to where it is now. illuminating and insightful.

Read this Book

for someone under 40, this book brings into stark and unwavering focus the story of how Anerica changed from the mythical nation I was taught as a child into the nation I have inherited as an adult.

A must read or listen to this book!

This was informative and clearly presented. I recommend this book to those who want a understandable explanation of our history since the 1960's.

Information we forgot or never knew

Loads of facts and insights that explain how we got to where we are in society and politics.

A New Look At our Changing Culture

An extremely intelligent and interesting book whose thesis, if correct, dramatically impacts each of us and our country for the future. Without being overtly political, it explains a lot about the forces and the dynamics that are tearing this country apart. Trump is never mentioned but he is explained. The loss of rights and the replacement of those rights with ideology is worrisome and largely missed or ignored.
This book causes the reader to stop and look at our culture through a new lens.

Answers the question of why we are So divided

The premises for this book is Intriguing and the author makes a great case for it. However, this is not an easy book to get through with a lot of SAT vocabulary and complicated sentence structure that makes this a difficult read. Although the historical Context is excellent and necessary, the author spends an inordinate amount of time going over the same ground here. I was let down by the author not offering any solutions to the problem that he so deftly constructed.

Sobering and entirely new look at what we’ve all lived

I can’t recommend this book enough. This is a must-read. (I suggest speed it up to 1.2X).

This book is the a recounting of American politics since the 60’s. But with a vision I’ve never seen before- the gift of hindsight.
Here Caldwell explains why Conservative feeling has grown ever sharper, without any satisfaction. It as if we have been focused on the wrong things.

The foe is not “equal rights”, or equality, but hegemony and replacement- two things completely at odds with equality OR equity.

This book will teach you why Barack Obama and the Left never lose, and why Trump never won battles. (Though Trump is mostly left out of this volume).

I bookmarked many sections. Will surely listen again. Certain chapters.

Solutions?

By the time I arrived at the end of this book, I was not sure if the author felt that there was a need for a civil rights movement and I was not sure if the author thought that the civil rights movement was good. Affirmative action is problematic, but I would have liked to have seen a comparison for legacy students or Students who play sports getting into a college ahead of others who may have higher academic scores. I would have liked to have seen some solutions suggested because it’s very easy to look at events and analyze them and yet not provide any ideas as to how things could have been done better.

Wow...I had no idea. A Must read

I couldn't understand the unequal treatment of people based on race, sex, religion, etc. This book helped explains how we got here today. Eye opening.