... superbly researched and written ... Klein has done his homework in reviewing the extensive academic literature on the subject and interviewing scores of actors immersed in practical politics ... provides a highly useful guide to this most central of political puzzles, digesting mountains of social science research and presenting it in an engaging form. There are two areas of weakness, however, in an overall outstanding volume...The first has to do with the central contention that our current polarization is fundamentally about race. Klein dismisses economic drivers of populism like globalization and the loss of working-class jobs, noting that if those were the fundamental issues, then left-wing populism rather than the nativist variety should have seen a big upsurge in support ... The book’s second weakness lies in suggested solutions, which Klein admits are not his strong point. Normatively and as a matter of practical politics, no reform is conceivable that disproportionately benefits one party over the other: His suggestions of congressional representation for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, or abolition of the electoral college, may be desirable in themselves but will never pass until the Democrats take over all three branches of government (in which case our polarization problem will have been largely solved) ... Klein dismisses complaints about political correctness and identity politics on the left, but a politics built on the grievances of ever narrower identity groups breeds similar thinking on the right, and it cannot be the basis for a broader democratic, civic identity that is the ultimate answer to polarization.
... delivers ... Klein describes neatly and concisely what has changed in our electoral politics ... Klein has few answers...even these measures, commendable though they may be, are a very heavy lift ... In the end, he offers simply the hope that as Americans become more aware of the cancer of our current identity politics, they will make efforts to reduce their own involvement. I hope he is right. I fear that, notwithstanding his thoughtful, clear and persuasive analysis, we have a long and torturous path ahead.
By weaving together a composite of group psychological theory and political history in the trademark, rigorously logical style of Vox’s Explainer series, journalism, Klein traces the path of polarization ... Klein is astute in diagnosing the agitation and protection of identity as the primary driver in the polarization of politics; we guard our identities fiercely (even trivial ones), an unconscious or preconscious precaution rather than an intellectual one. But it is important to ask: How much does this reading of politics leave out? Klein’s willingness to cede autonomy to group psychology resolves in a neat, unified theory because it downplays the friction that culture, history and social frameworks have on our behavior ... Klein gives little attention to the venue where our most fractious, hyperpolarized arguments over identity occur: the internet ... The incentives of this structure have proven their ability to change our brain chemistry, which doesn’t seem like a coincidence in our current political era, in which Klein argues we are more polarized than ever.
