The New American Story | Bill Bradley | A "HOW-TO" for citizenship and political leadership

The New American Story | Bill Bradley | wisdom for the ages

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The New American S...

	The New American Story Bill Bradley Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

?Politics is stuck,? writes Bill Bradley, in this insightful, informative, and provocative book about America at a crossroads, but ?idealism isn?t dead. It can be reawakened.?

What will it take to make America a better, stronger, truer country? asks the bestselling author, former Knicks star, and onetime presidential candidate. Bill Bradley believes that America is at a teachable moment when we are compelled to reevaluate our political system, our leadership, our agenda as a nation, and ourselves as citizens. With clarity and urgency, Bradley shows why the story we are being told now about who we are as a people is not true. He then offers a new story about our nation, based on America?s rich heritage and his belief in the character of the American people. Bradley explores what changes need to be made in our parties, in our politics, and in citizen activism to ensure America?s future. He asserts that the American people are ready for the truth and suggests that the party that chooses to embrace this new story will be in power for a generation.

Writing from his own experience in politics and drawing on his knowledge of history, Bradley shows how the Republican Party has built a solid pyramid structure since the 1970s, at the base of which are money, ideas, and media, whereas the Democratic Party?s structure is an inverted pyramid, with too much emphasis put on the need for a charismatic leader to hold the pyramid up. Each party, for different reasons, fails to deal with the real issues that now confront America.

This informed and inspiring call to action is addressed not only to the parties and elected leaders, but to citizens as well. Bradley proposes things every American can do to shape our nation?s future. He points out that if eighty percent of the electorate voted, instead of fifty percent, it would be the most important change in American politics since women got the vote. Now more than ever, he says, we need to embrace an ?ethic of connectedness,? a combination of collective action and individual responsibility, to solve our nation?s most pressing problems, and he argues that the fate of all countries is bound together as never before. Writing today with the freedom of a private citizen, Bradley provides this transformative and eye-opening book about the danger and the promise of America?s choice at this crucial moment in the nation?s history.

From the Hardcover edition.

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A "HOW-TO" for citizenship and political leadership

Why should you read this?

- If you care about our democracy and want to help make it strong again

- If you want to understand the big domestic challenges we face today

- If you want thoughtful proposals to addresses those challenges

- If you want to better the understand the Democratic and Republican parties; what makes them function, what makes them DYSFUNCTIONAL

- If you want to hear an insider's take on what makes our democracy tick, what makes it great, and what threatens its survival

This is a terrific book. If I had the money, I'd buy one for every member of Congress.

I listened to this book unabridged on audio, narrated by Michael Prichard. He does a good job capturing Bill Bradley's dignity, but to my ear doesn't quite capture his enthusiasm and passion for good government.

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wisdom for the ages

Deeply thoughtful and wonderfully wise, Mr. Bradley leads us through the major issues facing the United States in the 21st century with clarity, an engaging style, and the kindness/gentleness that we were taught to expect from our leadership. He proposes solutions that are sensible. I pray that his wisdom will be used to change our domestic and foreign policies in the coming years, for the sake of our great nation and its future citizens.

tmost

I loved this book.
It is really revealing about what he is thinking. He has some pretty crazy ideas - like the fee-bate, the (new) gas tax, and it's explanation and plan for the money??? It sounds good on paper, but I don't think it would ever fly. However, he is a really likeable guy and seems to be genuine in his efforts to make our country greater. I might even vote for him.

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Great insights for Americans

Bradley has done a brilliant job of describing how Americans have gone stray by allowing our leaders to take us off on a tangent in conflict with our founders' vision. The situation isn't hopeless but rapid action is called for. Congratulations to the ex-senator for a vision of hope and possibility. Well done, Bill!!

The Power of Stories

All of us are prisoners of the way we talk about things. Greed, fear, ambition and- occasionally- love and kindness shape the stories we tell about our reality and about our lives. Once the stories are told-in person or in the media-they become the reality to which we relate.
The most extreme example of this is the process of story-telling by which we turn other people into one-dimensional demons. `Liberals are unpatriotic' is the title of one such story. `Conservatives are selfish' is another. There are dozens of smaller stories. Most of the stories are about `us' or `them' although there are also stories with titles like `possible' and `never'.
The great strength of The New American Story lies simply in Bill Bradley's recounting of The Story We're Told. That is, he makes explicit the assumptions behind the heavily-funded discourse that shapes the way we Americans think and feel. In the process of simply making that story explicit, he makes it less powerful and clears the way for another, more generous story.

What's the difference between the Story We're Told and The New American Story? Essentially it's a matter of sentence structure. TSWT says that the market is the best allocator of resources, so we should leave it to operate without government interference. TNAS says that while the market is indeed efficient and the proper engine of economic growth, it's not the answer to every economic problem. TSWT says that you're either a patriot or a peacenik, TNAS says you can be both. The New American Story, at its simplest, sounds like the story most of us would tell if we stopped shouting and spoke in sentences instead of slogans.

Bradley doesn't stop with demolishing the power of current political stories and their titles: He injects into his discussion a few titles that haven't been co-opted or demonized yet. He re-introduces the word `progressive' (perhaps hoping that no one will mistake it for the now thoroughly ruined term `liberal') He talks about the need for action as a `community' (maybe hoping to avoid the stigma of the word for the formal expression of community that we call `government')Bradley's writing has often been accused of being clumsy and indeed the book is slow-going at times, but at least we can be sure that there was no professional ghost-writer involved.

Bill Bradley is a man of obvious good will and manifest frankness. It may be difficult for him to acknowledge that the stories we're told are supported by the economic self-interest of financial giants like the oil and auto industries. It may also be dispiriting for him to struggle with the fact that as long as media are both persuasive and purchaseable, stories will rise and fall according to the same logic by which hemlines, movies and pop music move in and out of public awareness. In any case, he isn't hopeless in the face of these realities.

Will new stories, or even The New Story set us free from the inefficient, slogan-based `discussion'? Can our political `debate' become more than a discourse between competing advertising agencies and focus-group watchers? For Bradley's New Story to take hold, a ground-level shift in American culture is necessary. Having just written a novel that tries to make a change in the culture of guns in this country, I'm very sympathetic and even a bit hopeful. Along with the predictable calls for citizen participation, he focuses attention on the places in the world where stories are created and shared. Internet communities like Gather.com and consensus and community builders like Essembly.com. are the places where we talk to each other and shape our understandings of things, the places where we get together, create communities and yes, tell new stories.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of New Short Course in Wine,The and
the New American Story about Guns bang BANG: A Novel

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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