One Nation Undecided: Clear Thinking about Five Hard Issues That Divide Us Hardcover - 2017

From the rear cover

"At a time of deep social and political division, along comes a much-needed book to steer us toward solutions to five very difficult national problems. There could be no better guide for this endeavor than Peter Schuck, one of the clearest and most thoughtful legal and policy scholars of this or any generation. Every policymaker at every level of government, and ideally every citizen, should read this book."--Robert E. Litan, author of Trillion Dollar Economists

"This is scholarship as performance art: Peter Schuck challenges our polarized era's life inside self-contained ideological silos by demonstrating what an evidence-based approach to policy, which sympathetically engages with competing positions, can teach us about many of our most hotly contested issues."--Richard H. Pildes, New York University School of Law

"Bringing together legal, political, empirical, and normative analysis, Peter Schuck trains his immense critical faculties and deep learning on five knotty public problems. The result is bracing. No policy wonk is likely to agree with all of the conclusions offered by this self-described 'militant moderate.' But all who care about the commonweal will come away thinking more clearly and more wisely."--Kay Lehman Schlozman, Boston College

"In this nuanced, intellectually eclectic, and scrupulously honest engagement with five 'hard problems' facing America, Peter Schuck sets for himself one supremely hard problem: How can evidence and analysis be made to prevail over passion and spin in our increasingly polarized, diminishingly reality-based republic? If anyone can pull off a plausible pep talk for reasoned debate on contentious public choices these days, Schuck can."--John D. Donahue, Harvard Kennedy School

"Quite good. One Nation Undecided gives detailed background on the facts and analysis of five controversial U.S. issues: poverty, immigration, campaign finance, affirmative action, and religious exemptions from government policies. Whatever your views on these issues, it's important to know the facts. Reading this book carefully made me, a policy wonk, realize how little I knew about four of those issues and that I didn't know quite as much as I thought I knew about the fifth, immigration."--David Henderson, Regulation

"Remarkable. Schuck covers a number of especially hard issues with unusual sophistication, care, and balance."--R. Shep Melnick, author of Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights

"Schuck's in-depth chapters illustrate what high-quality public debate looks like."--Mary Jo Bane, Harvard Kennedy School

Media reviews

Citations

• Choice, 09/01/2017, Page 0
• Publishers Weekly, 03/06/2017, Page 0