The Age of Entitlement

"One of the right's most gifted and astute journalists" offers a provocative analysis of how the Civil Rights Act drove us toward today's culture wars (The New York Times Book Review)Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences. His conclusion: 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, Oxycotin, 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.The Age of Entitlement "is an eloquent and bracing book, full of insight" about how the reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems--and drove it toward conflict (New York magazine).