The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future

This books opens your mind on a lot of issues happening in the world and USA. It's witty, full of excellent studies and helpful statistics. The format of the book is really original! I love it.... It so easy to follow author's concepts. Paragraphs in different font sizes are so easy to come back to if you need to refresh your mind. You almost feel like a part of a conversation! I will definitely read it again!

Once I finished the first chapter of Juan Enriquez's noteworthy book "The Untied States of America" it dawned on me it was not a book about the "United States of America" but the pulling apart of it. There's a vast amount of information in "UNTIED" and it's presented in a way that is easy way to digest. How did Juan Enriquez come up with all this stuff? The information is FANTASTIC and you'll probably want to read the book more than once to digest it fully. A couple of pages really spoke out to me personally; page 83 had this statement "Gaps in educational attainment and income can eventually become national security issues". "If two or more populations consistently diverge, if they become increasingly isolated, there is ever more opportunity for recrimination and blame". That's an example of what's happening now in the "UNTIED States of America"; and it's also happening in Iraq. As you read the book your taken to the possible future, a very real future where the boundaries of countries are different than what we know them to be today, and UNTIED makes it possible for me to envision how that might happen that the boundaries change. In fact, it's already happening and the process is accelerating; you may want to read the book to understand the changes. I know I'll be reading this book more than once.

A professor I know here at school once described Juan Enriquez's writing as "part e. e. cummings, part html." It's true. I just got this and it kept me up through the night. If you've ever thought that there's more to the red state/blue state divide than just presidential elections, or if you've ever thought there's more common culture between western Canada and California than between California and the Carolinas, or if you ever have wondered about the potential of a north-south "nation" of Spanish speakers on the American continent(s), this book will keep you up too. Oh, and did you know the United States almost acquired a large portion of Mexico as part of the Mexican bailout of the mid-90s?

A powerful and procative book that snaps you back to the right questions. The Untied States serves you with a clear and compelling story without agenda other than to make you think...