MixedLos Angeles Review of BooksThere is much to admire in this book ... Their aims and concerns are also laudable ... The greatest strength of Klein and Thompson’s book is in how clearly they bring...issues to the reader’s attention ... But what about their solution? ... Klein and Thompson explicitly avoid getting into the weeds by claiming that they are offering \'a lens\' to think about problems rather than \'a list\' of recommendations ... Another rub: their environmental assumptions ... [Their] Pollyannaish vision ignores the messy realities on the ground ... An unrealistic vision that fails to engage with hard choices ... Fails to recognize the deep dissatisfactions of millions of Americans ... A core limitation of this book is that it expects too much of technology ...
Just as Klein and Thompson have little to say about rural areas, they are remarkably mum about income inequality and the shrinking of the American middle class ... If Klein and Thompson’s aim is to force liberals to accept their portion of responsibility for the challenges facing the nation, then this book is a useful provocation, even if it lacks details about how to reconcile the public good with reduced red tape ... But to expect these changes to be the basis of a new political order is to overstate what technology can accomplish and to ignore the fundamental political divides fracturing the US today ... Ultimately, Klein and Thompson offer a vision of the United States’ problems that speaks mostly to the political concerns of urban elites and political donors—and not to the vast majority of American citizens.
