Stacked Deck: A Story of Selfishness in America

By Lawrence E. Mitchell

Americans for generations have been raised with the mantra that we can grow up to be anything we want to be, achieve anything we can imagine. How many of us believe the message? Dream big. It is a fundamental ideology of unbounded opportunity underscoring our drive to succeed. Yet for many Americans the reality, no matter how hard they try, is far from the visions of glory, the unattainable dream of rags to riches that leaves them feeling like failures. To understand this ideology and its effect on society, Lawrence E. Mitchell instructs us to look at the myth of individualism that pervades our laws, our social thought, our institutions, and our philosophies. It is the touchstone of our national debates on welfare reform, salary equity, FDA regulations, and a criminal defendant's right to a fair trial -- and it even infiltrates our private lives every time we argue about the division of household chores or television time. In Stacked Deck, Mitchell shows us how this artificial reality buries the way we truly live.Mithcell uses examples drawn from history, politics, law, and culture to show how our singular concern with fairness has diminished our sense of vulnerability, so that our ideas of justice, equality, and efficiency are modeled on the capabilities of the strongest in society. Large scale examples -- such as blue collar layoffs and corporate downsizing, natural disasters and catastrophic illnesses -- illustrates the rickety bridge between comfort and disaster. We must be reminded that we are all vulnerable to the forces of economics, society, politics, and nature. Thus, Mitchell proposes, those who start out at the top tend to stay there, just as the weak tend to remain weak. Stacked Deck does more than outline this problem of American selfishness; it proposes a solution tha tis nothing less than a massive reconception of the way we relate to one another. Mitchell retains what is productive about the myth of the self-reliant individual, while asserting what is necessary to restore a sense of community. He suggests a sweeping intellectual recovery of fairness available to all levels of American society, thereby reclaiming our true sense of responsibility to others in society.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566395925
• ISBN13: 9781566395922
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Length: 249 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

An exceptionally well-thought-out exposition on fairness.

Mitchell asks the question each and every one of us should ask ourselves at every opportunity, "Why do we treat the obviously vulnerable as different and vulnerability as pathological?" Then he states what should be obvious but is decidedly not: "A society that cares for your child will be a society in which your child cares for others." This book deserves a wide audience.

Stacked Deck is a must read!

Larry Mitchell has written a heartfelt and compassionate book that sucessfully debunks the American myth of self-reliance at all costs. If you have ever wondered why we have lost a sense of community, why the rich get richer while others do not, or why we have lost the valuable human connections that make life worth living, you must read his book. Mitchell adeptly shows why we are all vulnerable in some way and why we should care about the less fortunate -- who have had the deck stacked against them by our institutions and our thoughtless devotion to self-reliance. Stacked Deck is a must read. If we pay attention to Mitchell's argument, we might make a more compassionate world.

Read this book because you care.

Some authors, in effort to strengthen their own message, try and impress the reader with intellectual jargon. Instead, it puts many readers to sleep (and the book back on the shelf). Other authors, in effort to attract a broader audience, dilute their message with simple prose and, unfortunately, simplistic ideas. Mitchell's recipe for success is his ability to toe the line without reducing the impact of his message. This book should be read by every person who is not an Ivy League graduate, a country club member, or a BMW owner--and, more importantly, this book should be read by every person who is.