Normally, I think I would love this book, but it's another that took me an unearthly long time to finish, and i don't know how much is me and how much was it. Interesting look at how cluster demographics have come to redefine much of how we are targeted by marketers, politicians, churches, and how the niche-ifying of America is breaking down civic engagement. Kind of Bowling Alone with even more numbers, if you know what i mean.
Interesting stuff when you read it for the first time, and some very tasty nuggets about how Republicans were early adopters of some of these techniques (snagged from megachurches, who had snagged them from marketers!) and how that led to certain losses for Democrats. Ok, but I wouldn't really recommend it to someone who wasn't already into that stuff. "The Clustering of America" by Michael Weiss is a much better, if older book about the study and use of cluster demographics, "Latitudes and Attitudes: An Atlas of American Tastes, Trends, Politics and Passions" by the same author is even more fun, and "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam had such a big readership that I just don't think this one fits on the shelf. That sounds so much meaner than I meant it to come out.
