Five Books Spoken about in America

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/229553/five-books-spoken-about-in-america/

Five Books Spoken about in America
Krytyka Polityczna, Poland
By Jakub Dymek
Translated By Dariusz Koźbiał
31 December 2013

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1. George Packer, “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America”

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For Packer the economic collapse is an implosion of a system built upon false promises. And for people who experience it — an ordeal of lost stability and prospects. Although there are no simple summaries or nostalgia for “the old, better days” in this book, Packer manages to work into it a very concrete moral: In the times of Roosevelt or Johnson we were able to withstand the crisis with more solidarity. Nowadays, when Oprah Winfrey convinced us that success depends on individual efforts, faith and work — we are leaving the crisis even more divided and selfish.

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2. Evgeny Morozov, “To Save Everything, Click Here. The Folly of Internet Solutionism”

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Silicon Valley deceives us that another application will solve all problems of the world, but now it is preoccupied with such revolutionary ideas as making pizza deliveries to the residents of San Francisco easier and developing “smart” parking meters or calorie counters for smartphones. In what way will those things help 2 billion people living on less than a dollar and a half a day or 44 million Americans using food stamps?

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3. Katherine Losse, “The Boy Kings. A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network”

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Losse entered the polemic with Sheryl Sandberg, the author of another popular book from 2013, “Lean In.” Sandberg's book, which parsed managerial episodes in every prominent Internet corporation, says that the problem of women in the labor market is not discrimination, lowered wages or the glass ceiling. The problem is that they are not able to listen to their inner voice, which would help them to finally succeed. Don’t count on the labor unions and the state, explains the author of “Lean In,” just start to plan your careers and start to establish female self-help circles … most preferably on Facebook.

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4. Dave Eggers, “The Circle”

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Americans, as described by Eggers, implicitly trust the technology, but not each other; to believe people are honest and competent, they need constant supervision and cameras. One of the recurring themes of “The Circle” is a compulsive need to measure everything — male and female citizens of the Circle get points for taking care of their health, sharing photographs or immediately and politely responding to emails. These points mean nothing outside the screen, but in the world of the Circle — where the most important thing is to show oneself at one’s best and to secure a good position in the social network — they decide just about everything.