Alienated America: Why Some Place Thrive While Others Collapse

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Washington, DC (February 20, 2019) — In Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse (HarperCollins, February 19, 2019), political commentator and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Visiting Fellow Timothy P. Carney reaches beyond the conventional thinking about what led to Trump’s rise. He also identifies and analyzes the factors behind the decline of the American dream. Economic decline, he says, is just a symptom of the problem. He argues that this deterioration is not purely the result of economics as some claim, but the collapse of the institutions that made America successful, including marriage, church, and civic life.

Carney explains:

• How the American dream and the future of our liberal democracy are threatened significantly by inequality, pockets of immobility, political strife, and rising rates of addiction.
• How the woes of the working class are best understood by looking not at empty factories but at empty churches, broken families, and barren community halls.
• How the more a voter was socially detached in 2016, the more likely he or she was to be enthusiastic about Trump.
• How the road out of alienation and back to hope is largely through the revitalization of families, churches, and voluntary associations.

Timothy P. Carney is a visiting fellow at AEI, where he works on economic competition, civil society, localism, and religion in America.