The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars

TL;DR version of this review:First half is slow and meandering. Get your highlighter out, but be prepared to feel lost and to wonder if there's a book here. Second half is focused and well written, says some things that are brave for a liberal feminist, but that you've heard before, all the usual suspects presented in the now well-known "subvert the dominant narrative / intellectual dark web" style: Trump, campus SJWism, rape culture, toxic masculinity vs. femininity, social media, helicopter parents, race, gender, and transgender, and so on. Good as far as it goes. But author's conclusion—and only real innovation—is to suggest that if you're troubled by the culture right now, as she until recently has been, it's because you think you're still relevant, as she until recently did—until she woke up and realized that she wasn't, because as tends to happen, she got old. Humf.You want to cheer for the author, you're ready to cheer for the author, but you never quite get there. And in the end, if you're like me, you roll your eyes on the last page and wish she'd left it out.Extended review:So, I bought this last night. And I posted a first version of my review when halfway through the book, wondering—justifiably—if there *was* a book there at all.Despite such a question, I gave it four stars at the halfway point, even though as I pointed out, for the first half of the book, we seemed to have just been meandering through the author's life—largely as a way to compare American culture in the past (particularly as it relates to gender relations, but also around social politics more generally) with what seems to be a fundamentally broken American culture in the present.In my review, I said of the first half that:"I, like many, many others, am waiting with baited breath for someone to write The Definitive Incisive, Highly Personal Book on Our Collective Cultural Insanity at This Moment... Unfortunately, I don't think this book is it... I'm halfway through the damned thing and I still don't actually know exactly what what its argument is, or why it's titled what it is. As far as I can tell, I'm just accompanying the author on an extended stream-of-consciousness tour of her life and opinions, past as compared to present... a decent number of insights and in bricolage form an astute (qua all of us, as a society) if impressionistic reading of the culture and its trajectory over the last half century... incisive one-offs and head-nodding points worthy of highlighting, combined with the general rapturous feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, sane people, including sane feminists, are still out there... [yet there is] no clear thesis or argument, at least by the halfway point... no well-articulated structure that I can find... unclear whether the title is referencing or implying something specific, or just a catch-all meant literally..."All of that still largely stands as a summary of the book's first half. Insightful, essentially random social criticism from Gen X "sensible feminist / quasi-Riot-Grrrl" perspective. Readers should know before they buy that if they pick up this book, for the first full half of it they're going to ride along in the author's passenger seat as she drives around her neighborhood toward no immediately obvious destination, reminiscing about this and that thing out the window, offering an assortment observations on how so very many things in social life and cultural politcs have changed, and probably not for the better, and how much nuance and complexity has been lost (she risks, at times, mistaking "melange" for "nuance").But now I've finished the book and come back to update my review. And to remove a star, sadly.First, the good. I wrote the first version of my review after reading the first five (of eight) chapters, all of which meandered, both in terms of subject matter and formally as well. Having now finished the book, I know that chapter six is by far the strongest, and that when placed next to it, chapters five (just before) and seven (just after) are also play well. So, in retrospect these three chapters are the core of the book:Ch. 5: What Hath One Lecture Wrought!: Trouble on CampusCh. 6: On the Right Side of Things (Until I wasn't)Ch. 7: We're Not Joking: Humor, in MemoriamAnd as you finally arrive at and read them, the entire book begins to coalesce just a bit. Sadly, you have to read more than half of the manuscript to get to the meat, but it is there.Early on, the author says that she doesn't know what genre the book actually is, but having finished it, I do. It's a memoir. And the three chapters above that are the core of the book cover the author's time from college through the election of Donald Trump and the author's divorce through the years that followed, including time spent in a newly (re?)discovered teaching career and at a college reunion.Unfortunately, the arrival of stronger writing in those three chapters paradoxically pulls back the curtain just a bit. Whereas for the first half of the book, as a reader you're mesmerized just a bit by insightful comparisons and things-said-out-loud that you didn't realize you were thinking until you read them, once the author settles down into something that feels more like reading and less like wandering, you realize this is largely just another rumination on the election of Trump, along with its antecedents and the author's reaction afterward.Not that she does a bad job of this—as I say, the second half is far stronger as written prose, in my opinion, and more engaging. Unfortunately, it's also just more diet soda and low-calorie salad for the aforementioned anyone(s) still looking for The Definitive Incisive, Highly Personal Book on Our Collective Cultural Insanity at This Moment.The author scores points for being willing to publicly write a great number of things that need to be said. For example:That Ta-Nehsi Coates isn't necessarily the genius that he's made out to be, and worse is frankly treated like the magical negro by today's left intelligentsia. That much of today's "highly legible liberalism" is in fact "the intellectual version of a cheap high" for human-contact-starved folks in the age of social media. That sadly it's probably a law of social physics that "the more honest you are about what you think, the more you have to sit in solitude with your own thoughts" because if there's one thing that's unacceptable in our culture, it's telling the actual truth(s), and thus that "the culture is effectively mentally ill, or at least notably unwell" and that "there's never been a civilization as emotionally needy as this one" in which we've spent so much time lying to others in hopes of ensuring that in exchange they will continue to lie right back to us.If that's as far as we'd gone, I'd have left my review at four stars, saying that the first half of the book was good but just a bit flawed because it didn't seem to be about anything in particular, though it was interesting and peppered with insight, and that the second half of the book was good but just a bit flawed because though it was focused and well-written, it was by now just a bit trite, only seeming to be brave at times because it was written by a liberal, rather than by a conservative or by the "intellectual dark web" folks (whom she renames "Free Speech YouTube") from whom we've been hearing such things for several years now. Despite those flaws, it was engaging and well written.But Chapter 8, the final chapter—oh, Chapter 8. It's titled "What's the Problem?" and it's in this chapter that for whatever reason the author walks back everything she's done, interestingly if imperfectly, in the preceding pages.What *is* the problem? The author says that the problem is her. Indeed, the problem is us. Anyone who's bothered by any of this stuff. There is no problem with the culture, she decides. The problem is that people who have a problem with it are just, well, let's be blunt—old. Has-beens. Needing to get out of the way and let the young people do their work. Confused because we are so many anachronistic curiosities yelling at smart young folk to get off our lawns. We just don't understand because the world has passed us by.It's rather the longest shaggy dog story I've ever read. Seven chapters of interesting, if flawed, insightful stuff about problems in the culture, particularly in comparison to where we were as a culture not so long ago. Then, one final chapter of "NOT! We're just old, yo, and that's why we don't get it and why we think all this outdated stuff!"She concludes, in part, that:"Every day becomes yesterday before you know it... but there are always tomorrow's problems to look forward to... The problem with everything is meant to keep us believing, despite all the evidence to the contrary, in the exquisite lie of our own relevance."Sorry, but what faux-philosophical claptrap. No. Some things are right, and some things are wrong. Sometimes it's possible to make a reasoned judgment that a society is worse off during one period and better off during another. Twenty-somethings do not hold a monopoly on wisdom. In fact, as she suggests in earlier pages, they may not have all that much of it in many cases. After a very reasonable, four-starish discussion of the troubles out there for seven chapters, we conclude with this? "Oh, turns out I just wasn't relevant any longer but didn't realize it. NVM."Sadly, not buying it—it's a cop-out.Without the final chapter, four stars-ish.With it, two-and-a-half to three-stars-ish.Probably most useful as a "legitimate" text attempting to subvert the dominant narrative—one that can be deployed in cultural studies classes on modern campuses where assigning texts by Jordan Peterson or the like will probably cause a riot. This book is essentially a way to get those discussions in by the back door, since it's written by a woman and a feminist, published by a major house, and also because it lacks the courage of its convictions, walking back and/or backing away from its controversial assertions in the end.Worth a read as far as it goes, but don't expect it to set your world on fire.

I’ve heard this book described as “facile” which I find puzzling now that I’ve read it twice (it’s a quick read).While many of the purportedly contrarian ideas may sound familiar to some readers, and could even be viewed as increasingly mainstream, the book isn’t trying to sell a particular ideology or break any earth-shattering news. Instead it reads like a memoir- just one person’s honest, thoughtful, and well-written reflection of living through the events of the past few years on both coasts as well as in Iowa, which is a state in the middle part of the country.Whether you agree with the ideas she explores or reject them wholesale, Daum is an undeniably funny and credible narrator with a unique perspective to share. She takes a conversational tone and is in no way pedantic. In most cases you are invited to disagree w her interpretations and conclusions. To coin a masculine sports analogy, she is simply “calling balls and strikes”. Regardless of your gender, age, or politics, this is an interesting and entertaining read. And if you don't feel like reading it, that is okay too!

This book explores the issues revolving around the current culture wars, including identity politics, #MeToo, race and gender issues, political polarization, call-out and cancel culture, outrage, safe spaces, intersectionality theory, social justice warriors, “woke” culture, victimhood, etc. Ms. Daum covers a wide range of issues surrounding the current culture wars in the Trump era, and her book is quite comprehensive and concise within approximately 220 pages, 8 chapters. Her sense of humor and irony is present throughout, making it an entertaining and informative read. She takes us through the issues via her own history of realizing what has gone wrong with all the good intentions, and spares neither the left nor the right in her critique. Her brand of feminism, as she points out, is strong, but quite different from the loudest young voices of today. She embraces nuance, where the current “political correctness” movements reject it, and thereby points the way of perhaps returning society to rational and sane discourse on the myriad of sensitive subjects being tossed around in the brutal culture of social media today.

Tim Kreider recommended this book and I think it really delivered. Daum is willing to say the one thing that our culture right now needs so much more of--"I don't know." "Maybe." "Well here's my take." Not THE definitive take. She doesn't have all the answers, and she's uncomfortable with those that say they do. We are awash in conservative/liberal certainty, and it too often has the effect of dehumanizing the other side.Daum gives us a good start--we need more people of prominence questioning our dominant narratives whose brashness, stridency and certainty do a great job of shutting down dialogue and debate. What debate is there to be had with a moral monster?I appreciate her blending her reflections on the current state of our culture with her personal life--isn't that all of our experience? Isn't the political the personal, and vice versa? She does it with deliberateness and aplomb; no wasted words.

I thought this book was great. Maybe because I'm a Gen X professor who has taught the whole Millennial cohort as they've passed through the halls of academia and the generational divide seems to widen by the year. I thought that her insight that Gen X want to be "tough" while Millennials would prefer life be "fair" was spot on. I could write a very long review about how many things in this book needed to be said, and how glad I am that Daum is engaging hot-button topics in a nuanced way. People *are* messy -- women as much as men -- and the "four legs good, two legs better" direction feminism has gone has left me confused not only about identity politics, but what I think of a label I used to claim. Anyhow, I loved this. Glad she wrote it.

Elegant, crisp, thought-provoking and the most important sociopolitical thesis of the time!

Terrific, witty, insightful book. Perfect for Gen Xers who feel like their voices aren't being represented.

Nicely written book. I'd recommend.