This is a very moving story with characters that become real within the first few pages. It opens our eyes to the Maya ways of thought and to the modern struggles of all working people in a sometimes cruel and corrupt world. The ending took me by surprise but I didn't want to close the book or let go of the characters. I wanted to just begin reading this truely powerful story again. I highly recommend it!

This is a brave and beautiful book. Hard and sometimes harsh, it uses the language and imagery of an ancient people to tell a modern and eternal story of courage in the face of corruption. Shorris makes excruciating the details of two men's battle against impossible odds, and by doing so, ennobles them. No one who cares about politics or social justice in Mexico -- or the USA -- should miss this powerful book.

This is an brave and powerful book. It takes on profound issues facing all of us -- in the US as well as Mexico: economic domination, political corruption, and the meaning of courage in a world without empathy. There is no cynicism at the heart of this book; despite its sometimes gritty language and always too-accurate portrayals of the ways of power, at its heart this author must believe that there is a role for the lonely soldier of truth. Although this sometimes a hard book, I found lessons about life on every page. It should be read by anyone who cares about justice.

If you care about the future of this country, read this book

This book is about confronting poverty, about empowering the poor to take control of their lives, and is thus a major sociological document (though adoption of its agenda would put a small army of social fix-it people out of work). Just as important, though, it is a book about education, one that validates once again the irreplaceable treasure of a liberal education. The American educational establishment is in thrall to vocationalism, particularly, to preparation for corporate life (see "What Business Wants from Higher Education"). Aristotle warned us about this narrowly utilitarian view of mental culture, calling it the education of a slave. Taking to heart Robert Hutchins' aphorism ("The best education for the best is the best education for all"), Shorris took his idealism to the inner city and put a group of social cast-offs in touch with their powers--their intelligence, their sensitivity, their decency. Most went on to study successfully in college. We can't clone Mr. Shorris once, much less the thousands of times necessary to staff all the classrooms where someone like him is needed, but we can urge teachers and administrators to read his book. His book is a blessed antidote to the mountains of New Age educational tracts touting panaceas like cyber instruction, collaborative learning, education "tailored to the individual learning styles of each student," and other approaches that stress method at the expense of content.

Go ahead. Say it out loud: "Poverty," "Poor," "The Poor." Most of us feel at least uncomfortable if not repulsed when saying and thinking about these words. We push poverty away, deny its existence, avoid it and its implications. Not Earl Shorris. He plunges right in with his book "New American Blues," and takes us to places and through thoughts and situations that many of us would never choose to visit. Shorris, with insight like sharp knife, cuts to the quick and calls the question, what happens when people are acted upon? What happens when people are not at liberty to choose their response? Or on an even deeper level, what happens when people do not know that the liberty to choose their response is an option?

Poverty in America, the blemish on the model's perfect skin, the scarred lip framing the endless smile, the Achilles heel of the "land of milk and honey," the ugly duckling shunted aside by the American myth, is what we meet as we travel with Shorris through America's underbelly. Shorris takes the bold step into "the surround" as he calls it, the enclosure, into the pen, into the hopeless, isolated entrapment of the poor in America and asks how this poverty came to be and why it persists. Perhaps a question worth asking in the wealthiest nation on the planet?

Through his many examples of the dialogue of hopelessness and entrapment in the surround he brings the dark, perpetual stuckness of poverty in America into the light. For readers with the courage to look, it becomes crystal clear to just what extent the alienation and atomization of the citizens of the USA continue to drive a stake between the American ideals of equality, truth and justice for all -- and the cold bruising reality that is out there hiding (just barely) in the shadows.

Shorris highlights the critical importance of supporting the individual in developing the ability to reflect, to develop the capability not simply to fall into the patterns of knee-jerk reaction, but to become conscious of the surround. Through interaction "in the polis," by becoming involved in our community, with the people around us, the outer dialogue can be changed and a new dialogue can be internalized. It is critical to note that for those whose lives are within the surround of poverty he posits no mind space between stimulus and response, no dialogue allowing for alternatives. Perhaps the experience of Viktor Frankl is illustrative in this regard. I quote from Stephen Covey: "One, day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called "the last of the human freedoms" -- the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They could control his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Viktor Frankl himself was a self-aware being who could look as an observer at his very involvement. His basic identity was intact. He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between what happened to him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response." Shorris shows that the multigenerational poor in America, the land of the free, are neither aware of nor able to activate this power. The poor abdicate their option to decide for themselves, and the structure in which they live reinforces that abdication.

However, there is a thread of hope in the tapestry Shorris weaves for the reader as he poignantly reminds us that the clutches of the surround can be broken. Each individual must transform from unconsciously apolitical to consciously political awareness. As the forces of our consumer society press us toward alienation, we must turn the tide and engage. Though we live in the mass, perhaps the most profound solutions do lie within the individual, and can be activated through participation and integration. If that is so, what are we doing with the precious individuals in our land?

This is just a fantastic book. It will be one of my classics from here on. I appreciated where he started, "the plan of the book and the name of the people", from that moment on - I was hooked. It really raised my consciousness of which we are as a whole, as a people.
I have recommended this book to everyone I know to have as part of his or hers library or on coffee tables.

esta historia es instructiva, me ayudo aenterarme de cosas que ignoraba y cosas que no queria admitir. el llama a los latinos las personas que muerieron dos veces y nos muestra una radiografia historica de nuestros origenes y de nuestra presente adaptacion al medio norteamericano. algunos conservan restos de su cultura, los mas viejos conservan su lenguaje y sus tradiciones, los mas jovenes son absorbidos por la cultura que las trasnforma en seres sin raices ni tradiciones, que no son ni de aqui ni de alla. es un buen libro para conocernos y saber que no importa cuantos anos permanezcamos fuera no es bueno olvidarnos completamente de nuestros origenes.

LUIS MENDEZ luismendez@codetel.net.do

This is the best book about the modern corporate mentality; it's so accurate it's sometimes painful. Shorris mixes in hardheaded commentary about business with lengthy discussions of political philosopophy. His thesis is that the modern corporation has a good deal in common with totalitarian systems of government. While the modern business leaders and their cadres of managers and psychologists are much better intentioned and more genteel than political dictators, their impact on employees can be similarly soul-crushing. Shorris illustrates the effect of business policies with a series of fictional vignettes which will ring painfully true to anybody who has worked for a large organization. Any corporate employee who wants to get beyond dilbert-type easy sarcasm and understand what is really happening to his life should read this book.

Despite being out of print this is, arguably, the best book written on the what "really" happens in corporate America. Despite it's original publication date, it describes what is still happening every day within the walls of corporations large and small. Students who have worked for awhile are always amazed at how "right" Shorris gets it. It is an important piece that draws on an eclectic body of ideas creating a challenging and thought-provoking work.

It was later published in paperback under the title, "Scenes from Corporate Life: The Politics of Middle Management" (also out of print). Have Amazon look for both of them for you. Then email W.W. Norton and ask them to put either of them back into print!

An evocative description of what it's really like to work in a large, mainstream, post-war Corporation: The hidden heartbreaks and quiet agonies, mostly, though it also shows some of the positive side. This is all done through powerful stories of corporate people... like a more profound Stanley Bing. Like the previous reviewer, I too keep referring people to it, even though it's out of print. I also found it very inspiring when I wrote my history of the undertow of mainstream corporations, The Age of Heretics.

As a Professor of Management and a life-long "student" of corporations, I find this book engaging, insightful and challenging. Shorris draws widely on sociology, philosophy, history and political science (among others) to peel back the thick, protective veneer that hides the "real" workings of corporate America in the last 3o years of the century. It is not a pretty picture but one filled with hope and optimism because of the indefatigable nature of the human spirit. Despite being out of print, it has become the mainstay of my organizational behavior course because it prepares students for what to expect when they join corporate America.

In the tradiiton of shamans and tricksters of all ages, witchdoctors have lived with their feet in both worlds, one physical and one unseen, and Mr Shorris, the author of this book has also lived in two worlds, both equally esoteric. One was advertising, but more appropriately, a high level marketing consultancy and the other universe was literary, the apparently dull drawn out intellectualism of the journalistic writing a la Harper's and Atlantic Monthly. The book purports to evaluate the effects of market economy on culture, but this is not social science treatise, but rather a philosophical discourse in which the argument is the foregone conclusion. The book meanders from chapter to chapter, apparently without aim, but that is because it was packaged (no pun ntended) from a number of pieces written previously. One thing missing from this book is the point of reference that would show the prevalence of the marketing world vs all the people who are not working sales, but according to the latest Department f Labor stats the leading US blue collar job is truck driving while the leading white collar job is retail sales. So, the book on marketing is quite relevant. The book is dfressed up with epitaths for a post modern feel, but the glibness is too obvious to be stylish. The book's strength is a short Death of a Salesman fable that precedes each chapter. The stories are well written and illustrate different niches of marketing I wasn't even aware of. Mr Shorris definitely has a lot of experience, some of which he shares, but perhaps his talents are wasted on a philosophical treatise, when he could have put that wisdom and experience to better use writing a work of literary fiction.

I enjoyed reading the book. Earl Shorris has the courage and insight to expose the salesman in us all. I find his line on page 268--"To do this (selling) successfully the saleman has to follow the disciplines of his calling: Primarily, he cannot make judgements"--a key point in his book. Although I think it is too harsh to call a salesman a "serpent", I agree with the author that if all we do is just to sell without regard to how we truly feel about what it is that we are selling, we will be living a lonely and meaningless life.

Written just before the Web was spun, this book is an apologia for a life in sales, arguing that our politics and culture is manipulated by salesmen for short term profit. Along the way there are many interesting insights you may disagree with, but you'll have to chew on.

The author starts the book out by making the case that what distinguishes poor people from rich people is lack of access to "politics." By this, he means politics in the classical Greek sense of civic involvement. He says rich people it and poor people don't because poor people don't study the humanities (philosophy, history, classic literature.) He then hypothesizes that teaching poor people a rigorous introductory college level course on the great works of Western culture will give them politics and bring them up from poverty. He sets up just such a course, and documents the experience.

Interesting idea, and fantastic effort toward helping the poor, but the book ends without any significant analysis of whether his hypothesis was correct. He notes that some kids went on to college, and says a controlled study was beyond his scope. He never answers the questions (which he does raise) about the possibility that the successful students may have been self-selecting (by choosing to be in the course, and making it through) or may have been helped through all the attention or a mental exercise unrelated to the humanities.

Why on earth did he bother to put the reader through 100 pages of his quasi-religious reverence for the great books, then torture us with 100 more pages of reprinted course syllabuses and personal profiles, if he was never, ever planning to conclude with data (or even organized anecdotes) supporting his case?!

Bottom line: you will only like this book if you are an ivory tower academic with more of an interest in paying homage to the great books than solving problems related to poverty. If this is you, you'll have to be a die-hard leftist not to roll your eyes when he compares Bill Clinton to Jerry Falwell, and claims that social conservatives are unable to learn ethics.