The Overlooked Americans by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

THE OVERLOOKED AMERICANS by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett focuses on “The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means for Our Country.” Currid-Halkett, the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and professor of public policy at the University of Southern California, writes “I am not trying to convince you of my perspective, but rather I want to share with you with the people in rural America are experiencing and what they're saying about the important issues of our time.” She laments the analysts who are “dismissing and illegitimizing the fact that, for many conservative voters, cultural issues were more important to them than economic ones.” Based on her work, Currid-Halkett argues that “the United States is a far less divided place than our media and politicians would like us to believe.” She may have a point given, for example, the recent returns on Issue 1 in Ohio where local news conceded, “Residents from extensive urban centers, as well as suburban and rural regions, joined forces to voice their dissent against the potential changes.” Currid-Halkett advocates for more listening and outlines a very complicated situation that should spark all kinds of discussion. She includes an extensive Bibliography and Notes which together account for roughly a fourth of the text. THE OVERLOOKED AMERICANS received a starred review from Kirkus, is a 2023 Must Read Book for The Next Big Idea Club, and would certainly complement the work that Judy Woodruff is doing for PBS on America at a Crossroads.

Added August 23rd: Just wanted to briefly make the connection between David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere (2017) where he talks about people who are “Anywheres” – comfortable around the globe – and those who are “Somewheres” – identifying with a very local environment. The Economist just published a super interesting piece (“Red giveaway”) which describes research that attempted to measure this and found that “moral values underlie voters’ choices.” Benjamin Enke, Steven Sun, Raymond Fisman, and Luis Mota Freitas looked at “particularism” versus “universalism” and found that both Republican lawmakers and Republican voters tended to favor the former, making speeches and giving to charities that favored those close to them.