Political Animals

November 1, 2015
An explanation of how our brains are simply not built for politics in the modern world. Why would a series of shark attacks along the New Jersey coast cause locals to abandon President Woodrow Wilson's re-election bid? Why, in the immediate wake of 9/11, did support for President George W. Bush soar? Why do fans of winning football teams feel better about incumbents? Why did it take voters so long to realize Nixon was lying about Watergate and Clinton was lying about philandering? Shenkman (History/George Mason Univ.; Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter, 2008, etc.) answers these and many other questions by focusing on the disconnect between our brains and our instincts and emotions, powerful antennae that worked well for our hunter-gatherer ancestors gathered in tribes of about 150. These instincts fail us in the modern world, where scale, pace, and context have enlarged and quickened beyond anything our Pleistocene-era circuitry can handle. Drawing on a variety of disciplines--neuroscience, evolutionary and social psychology, anthropology, among others--Shenkman addresses our alarming indifference to politics, our chronic misreading of our leaders, our ambivalent relationship to the truth, and our frequent failure to empathize in situations that clearly warrant concern. Readers will appreciate his personable, chatty tone and will delight in the broad allusions and the wide variety of historical incidents he cites to help make his point. He examines why certain members of the Donner Party survived, why the Pentagon persisted with the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign against North Vietnam despite evidence of its futility, and why we value group membership over the truth. His call for us to recognize and account for our biases and to invoke a higher order of thinking sounds more wishful than likely, but he makes a convincing case about our hard-wired infirmities and how they work to undermine our democracy. An amiable tour of the socioscientific evidence that accounts for our political miscalculations.

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November 1, 2015

Shenkman (founder & editor, George Mason Univ.'s History News Network) is perhaps best known for his book Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter. In it, the author explores how myths have misguided the American voter. In his latest title, Shenkman explains modern political behavior through the lens of evolutionary psychology. Our primitive brains, he argues, shaped during the Stone Age when bands of hunter-gatherers numbered no more than 150 people, and who more or less knew one another, are not equipped to face the complex demands of a multicultural democracy of millions of citizens. This book doesn't have the explanatory rigor of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's related The Righteous Mind, though it often cites that title. Shenkman's skillful employment of historical anecdotes as examples, however, do well to echo the myth thesis from his earlier writings. For instance, the author's favorite example is the public's seemingly willful ignorance--despite overwhelming evidence--of Richard Nixon's guilt during the Watergate scandal. This group identity bias is among those adaptations that may have served well our Pleistocene ancestors but run counter to what is expected from an informed electorate. VERDICT This work provokes the idea that perhaps we can achieve a new phase of democratic enlightenment. Recommended.--Jeffrey J. Dickens, Southern Connecticut State Univ. Libs., New Haven

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2015
Why do American citizens and their leaders make so many poor political decisions? According to historian Shenkman, there are several factors at play here, but behind them all, we are driven by our Stone Age brains. When we evolved as a species in the Pleistocene epoch, we lived in communities rarely larger than 200 individuals. We knew everyone well, and most important, we knew whom to trust. Now, with the same brain abilities, we live in a global society removed from our leaders and dealing with people on other continents. We have little firsthand knowledge about our political candidates and the policies they reportedly favor. Once elected, they may and often do act differently than promised. Shenkman recounts political events from the past half century. Focusing much of his text on American presidential administrations, he shows all of them bending truth to exploit our Stone Age decision making to the detriment of the nation at large. He suggests ways for us to recognize and modernize our outdated political thinking to save our country.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from April 1, 2016

Shenkman offers a thought-provoking investigation of why we have not evolved to a position from which we can rely on instinct alone when making political choices. He surveys current research in science and psychology to show that political decisions are rooted in basic human impulses, such as a suspicion of outsiders, a lockstep belief in our own ideology, and misconstruing opinion as fact when it fits our preconceived notions. (LJ 11/1/15)

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.