At least 2020 produced two good books on polarization in America

• Tanya Israel, Beyond Your Bubble (American Psychological Association, 2020): Must Read

• Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized (Avid Reader Press, 2020). Should Read/Could Read

Must Read:

Tanya Israel, Beyond Your Bubble (American Psychological Association, 2020)

For over thirty years I taught a course in Conflict Resolution at George Fox. For all those years I used the same two books -- Roger Fisher and William Ury's Getting to Yes, and Mark Juergensmeyer's Gandhi's Way (formerly Fighting Fair, originally Fighting With Gandhi). Those two pillars covered only part of the subject, so I was alway trying out newer materials to help students with the rest of the course. I never found a third pillar I liked enough to use more than a couple of times.

Until now. Tanya Israel's Beyond Your Bubble is the perfect complement to the other two. She starts by describing America's political, religious, cultural, and social polarization, and how humans are motivated to seek safety from people with views that threaten their own identities. She tries to answer the question "how can I get along better with people who disagree with me on fundamental issues?" Her answers are both practical and inspiring, emphasizing humility, compassion, dialog skills -- and especially listening. I wouldn't say she covers every dimension of civility, but she provides an excellent starting place.

If alumni of my conflict resolution or mediation classes ask me to recommend a refresher for the things they're forgetting, I enthusiastically recommend reading Beyond Your Bubble -- which all the rest of us should read, too.

Should Read/Could Read

Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized (Avid Reader Press, 2020).

This new book by the co-founder of the Vox website does an excellent job of explaining the dynamics that have driven America into political polarization over the last 60 years.

Klein offers a compelling description of how our various personal identities (religious, family, ethnic, professional, social, political. etc.) were, before 1960, likely to put us into contact with different groups of people. Today they are much less likely to do so, as we find it easier (and more pleasant) to spend our time connecting to people who don't make us uncomfortable. Klein describes this as "stacking" our identities to minimize interacting with anyone who disturbs us with significant disagreements.

Klein blames this trend on two things, primarily. The first is the rise of the internet and social media and its global audience. Content providers can now target narrow segments of the population and feed them material to confirm their existing views and biases. The second is the dramatic transformation of the two main American political parties into two distinct political camps, with dynamics pulling both of them away from the middle. These agents both drive our polarization, and are driven by it, continually widening and hardening the gap.

Klein accomplishes all this in the first half of the book, in which he does a remarkable job of describing both conservative and liberal/progressive views in terms each would find accurate. This part of the book is a strong Should Read, almost a Must Read. The second half is less impressive in this way -- more of a Could Read. Perhaps as a result, the book ends with a short and weak list of ideas for how to reverse these trends.

Summary:

Tanya Israel's Beyond Your Bubble is the more helpful of these two books. Ezra Klein gives a fuller description of the dynamics driving division, but Israel offers a lot more to our understanding of civility and healing relationships broken by polarized politics.

-- Ron Mock