Introduction

We have a neighborhood Internet listserver in South Austin that is often a source of good information about painters, plumbers, and lost animals. The e-discussion can also become a parody of liberal preciousness...

From Chapter 3: The Psychology of the Tribe

Washington was, from its beginning, a politically segregated city. In his forty-year-old study, The Washington Community, historian James Sterling Young mapped three Washingtons, one created for each of the three branches of government...

From Chapter 7: Religion — The Missionary and the Megachurch

Rick Warren's wildly popular book The Purpose-Driven Life begins with a challenge to Americans' post-materialist self-centeredness: "It's not about you." In the sense of the Great Commission, that is exactly right. Life and the church are about finding salvation in Christ...

From Chapter 9: Lifestyle — Books, Beer, Bikes, and Birkinstocks

Doug Breese ranches land his grandfather began piecing together in 1905. Homesteaders who had come to central Oregon realized that they weren't making any money and likely never would...

From Chapter 12: To Marry Your Enemies

Americans have been polarized before, of course, and these divisions have been cured by the eventual (some political scientists say inevitable) rise of cross-cutting issues. Although the two parties emerged from the 2006 midterm elections as polarized as at any time since the end of World War II, this kind of rigid partisanship can't last...