"Coming Apart" By Charles Murray

From the Best-selling Author of The Bell Curve,

A Revealing Expose on the Collapse of the

American Culture

COMING APART

The State of White America, 1960-2010

By Charles Murray

"Murray offers sketches of life lived in the upper class and the lower class and argues for the need to focus on what has made the U.S. exceptional beyond its wealth and military power, the ideals that have held a highly diverse nation together: religion, marriage, industriousness, and morality. Writing from a libertarian perspective, Murray offers a hopeful long view of elites, who have enormous influence on economic and social policy, coming to understand the peril of their disconnection from the rest of America."

--Booklist, starred review

"A timely investigation into a worsening class divide no one can afford to ignore."

--Publishers Weekly

Charles Murray is no stranger to controversy. Named by The National Journal as one of the 50 "People Who Make a Difference" in national policy-making, he is one of the select few leading today’s debate on social policy. He is known for his frank and candid approach, and his best-selling books Losing Ground, The Bell Curve, and others works have provided a much needed dose of reality when it comes to the issues surrounding education, government, and social reform. Now, in COMING APART: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Murray offers an in-depth exploration of the evolution of American society that is sure to stir debate.

While America has never been a classless society, there has always been a collective identity - until now. COMING APART argues that the American classes have reached a level of separation unlike anything we have ever known before. Using data from the 1960 and 2000 censuses, Murray demonstrates the emergence of a spatial isolation between the social classes that has no parallel in American history. Murray first takes on what he calls the new upper class: a highly educated, successful, affluent group concentrated in what he calls "SuperZips" clustered around a few centers of national power. It is this upper class that is running the country, yet they are increasingly isolated from, and ignorant about, the rest of America, having never interacted with those outside their upper-middle class bubble. For the bottom third of white America, which Murray refers to as the new lower class, there has been a deterioration in the quality of life.

Murray examines specifically American trends regarding marriage, religion, honesty, and industriousness for the past fifty years to show how communities are socially collapsing. In taking on this task, Murray limits the data exclusively to non-Latino whites, giving the reader no choice but to recognize that the changes he describes are not grounded in racial or ethnic divisions, nor are they based on current economic hard times. (As the data show, life in the American working class was breaking down in the 1980s and 1990s when the country was enjoying an economic boom.) Those trends are frightening, showing wide gaps that have opened up in behaviors that once united Americans across classes. Hardly anyone in the upper class has even noticed the change, and COMING APART is the first book to bring this startling transformation to public attention.

Murray shows us that America has devolved into a class system where those at the top and those at the bottom barely inhabit the same culture. A startling long-lens view, COMING APART reveals the ways in which America is coming apart at the seams that once stitched us together. Murray evokes the civic culture that was so widely shared among Americans that it amounted to a civil religion. "To be an American was to be different from other nationalities, in ways that Americans treasured," Murray writes. "That culture is unraveling." Murray forces us to look unblinkingly at the nature of the problem because, as he argues, the price of turning a blind eye is the end to what has made America America.

About the Author: Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition to his books and articles in technical journals, Murray has published extensively in The New Republic, Commentary, The Public Interest, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Washington Post. He has been a frequent witness before congressional and senate committees and a consultant to senior government officials on education and welfare.

SandyPR.com Celebrates 5 Years

I'm so thrilled to be celebrating my 5 year anniversary since going freelance with SandyPR.com.  And with the addition of SandyPundits.com, my business is growing like crazy and becoming quite a success with the pundits, authors and political and financial bloggers.  I've been privileged to be able to work with only the best in the business and I truly admire each and every one of my clients.  They place an enormous amount of faith in me representing them to the world of talk radio and I'm so excited to have been able to build a wonderful relationship with hosts and producers all over America since 1998.

It's a thrilling time in the world of technology and the Internet has given me so many opportunities to flourish as a publicist... and I still haven't had to advertise!  It's been all word of mouth and I thank my wonderful clients for spreading the word about my services.  I am happy to still be able to offer the lowest subscription rates while providing a quality service which helps my clients' careers onward and upward toward the success they so deserve, and radio tours for the best authors who are sent to me by the biggest and best publishers in Manhattan.  Here's to 5 more years!! --Sandy

New Film to Look at Education Fight in Chicago

Juan Williams pulls no punches in school expose

A Tale of Two Missions - a film by Juan Williams and Kyle Olson, Founder and CEO of Education Action Group Foundation - tells the story of competing cultures in American education through examples from Chicago.

While the fight for school choice rages across the nation, perhaps no better example exists than that of the Windy City. Traditional alliances are breaking down. Both political parties are pushing for education reform and expanded school choice. The status quo is under attack, because most reasonable people understand that thousands of Chicago students are trapped in failing schools.

But the education establishment, led by the radical Chicago Teachers Union, is not willing to give an inch to allow better choices for underserved students. And the union still has enough money, influence and legal standing to make reform efforts difficult to implement.

The film features the Noble Street College Prep charter school and the amazing results its teachers and leaders are delivering for students and parents of Chicago. It also exposes the entrenched educational establishment bent on stifling school choice options and preserving its monopoly on state education dollars.

"Juan's voice cuts through the daily back-and-forth and issues a searing indictment of a system that is largely focused on the needs of adults," said Kyle Olson, executive producer of the film and founder of Education Action Group. "It is our hope that this will provide the public with an unvarnished analysis of the state of our schools, as well as a glimpse into what could be, if the teachers unions would drop their consistent opposition to reform."

Being released during National School Choice Week, the film runs approximately 35 minutes and is geared towards generating discussion about the role of our schools and what obstacles can be overcome when school culture is focused on student success rather than adult demands.

Go Here for an exclusive look at DVDs of the film. An abridged version can be seen here or at twomissionsmovie.com.

School Choice Week 2012

Nation's Largest-Ever Celebration of Education Reform Kicks Off With National School Choice Week, January 23-28, 2012         

Tens of thousands of Americans in all 50 states will gather for the largest celebration of education reform in American history this month.

National School Choice Week, a series of hundreds of events shining a spotlight on the need for better educational options for children, will kick off at a special event in New Orleans, Louisiana on January 21, 2012 and run until January 28, 2012.

During National School Choice Week (www.SchoolChoiceWeek.com), more than 250 events will take place in every corner of the nation. Everyone from children, parents, teachers, and community leaders - to celebrities, sports figures, elected officials, and more - will participate in this unprecedented bipartisan commemoration. In addition, governors from across the country are expected to commemorate the Week with special proclamations.

Supporters of National School Choice Week believe that children and families deserve increased access to great public schools, public charter schools, virtual schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Advocates also believe that with high dropout rates plaguing many school districts - one child drops out of an American school every 26 seconds - and with America’s standing in math and literacy rankings lagging behind 34 other countries, educational choice is an essential solution to the growing crisis of educational quality.

The Week will kick off on Saturday, January 21, 2012 with a major celebration featuring The Temptations and Ellis Marsalis at 10:30 AM at the Lakefront Arena in New Orleans. For more information or to find an event near you, please visit: http://www.schoolchoiceweek.com/.

Capitalism 101 By Leon Weinstein

Capitalism 101

By Leon Weinstein

As we find ourselves amidst arguably the most critical presidential election in the history of America, the GOP candidates debating weekly on all the hotly contested issues of our time, none is more heated - in light of Obamacare, the most controversial act of the current administration - than the possibility that we may be on the brink of becoming a socialist nation.

What better time to learn from the wisdom and personal experiences of one who emigrated from the USSR and knows firsthand what it means to live in a Communist society?  In his new book, Capitalism 101, former Soviet Union citizen, political writer and social commentator, Leon Weinstein, speaks in no uncertain terms of the stark contrast between the life he knew in Russia versus the one he discovered in America.  His book is a dire warning to Americans about the consequences of allowing our government to whittle away at our freedoms.  Mr. Weinstein states clearly what The Declaration of Independence meant by "freedom" and the impact a socialist agenda may have on America and calls for basic changes to the ways we govern.

Capitalism 101 is a blueprint of how a just and free society should be built in order to survive. Ayn Rand showed us what not to do. George Orwell showed us what would happen if we go the wrong way. Fifty years later, Leon Weinstein shows us what must be done as quickly as possible in order to preserve our freedom and enjoy the prosperity we once knew as the greatest nation on Earth.

"If Americans continue allowing their government to take from them any amount of money it wants to, whenever it wants to; if Americans continue allowing people who do not contribute to the society to vote on what to do with the money the others earned; if Americans continue allowing their government to expand its powers instead of merely protect and serve," say Weinstein, "this country will reach the point of no return, after which it will be impossible to stop or even reduce entitlement programs and the morphing into a nanny state and eventual transformation into a tyranny will begin."

Capitalism 101 proves beyond a doubt that in order to sustain the high quality of life and the freedom that Americans have enjoyed in the past, the government's role must be redefined as "to protect and serve" and NOT to use taxpayers' money to choose favorites, create entitlements or compete with the private sector. More information: http://capitalism101.net/

About the Author: Leon Weinstein emigrated from the USSR to Israel in 1974, where he completed his pre-doctoral study at the Ramat Aviv University. In Israel, Mr. Weinstein was actively involved in the election of a right-of-center Likud coalition into Knesset (Israeli Parliament). Starting in 1989, he began to take active part in establishing ties between Post-Soviet Russia and his newly adopted homeland, America. In 1990, he initiated sister city relations between St. Petersburg and Los Angeles and co-founded several companies with operations in both countries. Mr. Weinstein is the author of numerous political articles defending capitalism. His first political novel, "Looking for Hugh: The Capitalist Guidebook" was published in 2009 and "Capitalism 101" in 2012. He is a frequent guest on talk radio and has written for FrontPageMag.com.