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

5.0

Sometimes it can come across a little condescending, as well as hitting you over the head with certain key phrases (empathy wall, deep story, etc). But in general, I think it's a valuable read for most people. For people leaning left, it's valuable to see that seeming contradictions in views of those leaning right are not exactly contradictions, but differing focus (which was actually best described in the new afterword). For those leaning right, the perspective the author offers in how they view the attitudes of those they interview is a look directly into the mind of a classic left-leaning American. If anything, it shows how easy it can be to find common ground, but how hard it is to act on that without the ground falling apart (sometimes literally).