jwfrench 's review for:

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild

5.0

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Arlie Russell Hochschild does a great job at scaling the 'empathy wall' and bringing the reader along as she works to better understand the driving narrative and values of the Tea Party and Conservative Right. I often hear friends quick to call Conservatives hypocrites, framing them with over-simplified 'gotcha' reasoning. Hochschild's journey and book help to break down some of these stereotypes into richer portraits. While still colored with contradictions, we are reminded that humans are inherently full of contradictions (never one-dimensional), and that is a much more useful way to approach our increasingly divided sociopolitical landscape.