The subtitle of this book is "Human Capital and the Making of Millennials," which gives a pretty good sense of the thrust of the argument made in this book. It purports to be a book intent on explaining why Millennials are the way they are, using facts and macroeconomic analysis, but it is also very much a philosophical point of view desperately seeking factual support, rather than a conclusion being discovered via research. The entire thing feels reverse engineered, which may be satisfying to read if you agree with the arguments being made, but doesn't exactly make it well supported or especially illuminating.
Harris's essential argument boils down to the theory that millennials were born into a world in which there was ever greater competition for even fewer spots, that the middle class had ceased to have opportunities that the Boomers had enjoyed, and that millennials have become so accustomed to needing to go the extra mile in order to achieve anything that they've fundamentally and permanently undervalued their own labor. He gets some credit for actually understanding that, at the time of writing his book, millennials were anywhere from 20 to 35 years old, but he still fell prey to the impulse to equate millennial with young whenever convenient. He spends a short amount of the book acknowledging that our view of who a millennial is makes a bunch of assumptions about whose lives we mean when we reference generations: American, largely white, largely "middle class," largely suburban. He also acknowledges that many of the shifts from Gen X to millennial have causes beyond the economic hollowing out of the American middle class, but is fairly uninterested in exploring any of them. It is a book that is almost instantaneously dated; it was written mostly during 2016 but came out in 2017, and he makes no bones about the fact that in his view the entire world is now permanently fucked and that there's no way out for anyone, and in fact there hasn't been any way out since these beaten down millennials refused to collectively rise up and overthrow capitalism during the Occupy movement or at the very least by electing Bernie Sanders as president. It is a fundamentally short-sighted view of history that feels so entirely male and white even while it attempts to demonstrate that it recognizes women and people of color I cannot take it seriously. There are plenty of reasons for pessimism in this world, and millennials have in fact been dealt a shitty hand compared with their Boomer parents--but that shitty hand is only especially remarkable if you are one of the white male college educated millennials who thought things would be better for you, specifically. His afterward, in which he describes what he predicts the future will be, only made me shake my head at how limited and limiting his imagination truly is. Things are bad, and finding a path forward is and will be hard. But there is something too close to a celebratory tone of how fucked we all are in his analysis, and a condescending sympathy for those who don't acknowledge this permanent condition, and I stopped talking to dicks like that back when I was in college. I wish this book had actually been what I think a book on this topic really could be.
Grade: C
Harris's essential argument boils down to the theory that millennials were born into a world in which there was ever greater competition for even fewer spots, that the middle class had ceased to have opportunities that the Boomers had enjoyed, and that millennials have become so accustomed to needing to go the extra mile in order to achieve anything that they've fundamentally and permanently undervalued their own labor. He gets some credit for actually understanding that, at the time of writing his book, millennials were anywhere from 20 to 35 years old, but he still fell prey to the impulse to equate millennial with young whenever convenient. He spends a short amount of the book acknowledging that our view of who a millennial is makes a bunch of assumptions about whose lives we mean when we reference generations: American, largely white, largely "middle class," largely suburban. He also acknowledges that many of the shifts from Gen X to millennial have causes beyond the economic hollowing out of the American middle class, but is fairly uninterested in exploring any of them. It is a book that is almost instantaneously dated; it was written mostly during 2016 but came out in 2017, and he makes no bones about the fact that in his view the entire world is now permanently fucked and that there's no way out for anyone, and in fact there hasn't been any way out since these beaten down millennials refused to collectively rise up and overthrow capitalism during the Occupy movement or at the very least by electing Bernie Sanders as president. It is a fundamentally short-sighted view of history that feels so entirely male and white even while it attempts to demonstrate that it recognizes women and people of color I cannot take it seriously. There are plenty of reasons for pessimism in this world, and millennials have in fact been dealt a shitty hand compared with their Boomer parents--but that shitty hand is only especially remarkable if you are one of the white male college educated millennials who thought things would be better for you, specifically. His afterward, in which he describes what he predicts the future will be, only made me shake my head at how limited and limiting his imagination truly is. Things are bad, and finding a path forward is and will be hard. But there is something too close to a celebratory tone of how fucked we all are in his analysis, and a condescending sympathy for those who don't acknowledge this permanent condition, and I stopped talking to dicks like that back when I was in college. I wish this book had actually been what I think a book on this topic really could be.
Grade: C
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