|
|
List Price: $22.95 Price: $0.17 You Save: $22.78 (99%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Dewey Decimal Number: 349.73 EAN: 9780375504228 Edition: 1 ISBN: 0375504222 Label: Random House Manufacturer: Random House Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 272 Publication Date: April 24, 2001 Publisher: Random House Release Date: April 24, 2001 Studio: Random House Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: Author Philip K. Howard returns with the same storytelling style and supreme reasonableness that made his first book, The Death of Common Sense, such a smash hit in 1995. He begins The Lost Art of Drawing the Line by noting the damage predatory litigation has done to the communal fabric of the United States: "Social relations in America, far from steadied by law's sure hand, are a tangle of frayed legal nerves." He tells how seesaws have started to vanish from playgrounds, how teachers are banned from touching students, and how emergency-room staff are blocked from attending to patients off hospital grounds--even if they can see them bleeding to death just 30 feet away. These aren't just speculations, a parade of hypothetical horror stories--they are actual trends and events that Howard describes and documents. The ability to weave dozens of anecdotes like these into his narrative is one of Howard's great strengths, and it allows him to make important points in entertaining ways. Yet the book is much more than a collection of outrageous stories or a mere broadside against the legal system--though the legal system does come in for plenty of criticism. Instead, it's a meditation on the meaning of freedom, why freedom cannot exist outside of authority, and why individuals in positions of authority should have the ability to make decisions based on sound judgment. There is a temptation to secure liberty by restricting authority through the law, but this can be overdone, and it carries a high price: "Put law or any other formal construct in the middle of daily dealings, and people will start looking to the law instead of to one another." Then things get much worse: "The more our common institutions fail us, the more Americans want to limit their authority. Through a downward cycle of distrust, legal controls, [and] worse failure ... we drive Americans' governing institutions further into the bureaucratic maw." That is a terrible place to be, where no one is held accountable and antisocial behavior rules. And it has nothing at all to do with freedom. --John J. Miller Product Description: The Lost Art of Drawing the Line will appall and irritate — and entertain — readers every bit as much as Philip Howard’s first book. Why is it that no one can fix the schools? Why do ordinary judgements fill doctors with fear? Why are seesaws disappearing from playgrounds? Why has a wave of selfish people overtaken America? In our effort to protect the individual against unfair decisions, we have created a society where no one’s in charge of anything. Silly lawsuits strike fear in our hearts because judges don’t think they have the authority to dismiss them. Inner-city schools are filthy and mired in a cycle of incompetence because no one has the authority to decide who’s doing the job and who’s not. When no one’s in charge, we all lose our link to the common good. When principals lack authority over schools, of what use are the parents’ views? When no one can judge right and wrong, why not be as selfish as you can be? Philip Howard traces our well-meaning effort to protect individuals through the twentieth century, with the unintended result that we have lost much of our individual freedom. Buttressed with scores of stories that make you want to collar the next self-centered jerk or hapless bureaucrat, The Lost Art of Drawing the Line demonstrates once again that Philip Howard is “trying to drive us all sane.” Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Howard Goes Too FarHoward's previous effort, "Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America," was spot-on. This one, unfortunately, takes the misguided and anti-liberty view that our courts are supposed to make law, rather than decide its legality. Howard correctly excoriates the judicial approach which examines laws in anal-rententive detail, which finds "hidden meaning" where there plainly is none. He correctly prefers the precepts of common law over the intrusive restrictions of legislation. ... Read More Rating:  - Excellent book with some horrid editorial aspects.Philip K. Howard, The Collapse of the Common Good (Ballantine, 2001) Howard's first book, The Death of Common Sense, should be required reading in high schools and law schools across the nation. Instead, it's supported by a select few and most of the country has never heard of it, despite our best efforts. So Howard releases another book, and I pick it up. The Collapse of the Common Good takes much the same refrain as The Death of Common Sense, but turns its focus from governmental ... Read More Rating:  - A book that will really make you thinkAs an immigrant to the US (from Mexico), one of the hardest things for me to get used to was the skewed sense of freedom and entitlement that is sometimes expressed in this country. On my own I had been trying to come to grips with the ideas of extreme lawsuits, political correctness, and limits on authority. While I'm in favor of the basic ideas expressed in all these principles, I constantly get a feeling that many people don't understand the true meaning of their rights and simply abused their privileges. Read More Rating: - Gets you thinkingI thought this book was an easy read. Howard does his best to light a fire under you to get you thinking. People are so worried about their individual rights, common sense gets thrown out with the bath water!!! This is a good motivational book for any elected official to read. I actually read this book for an assignment, and the book opened my eyes on really how inhumane or shallow our culture is becoming. Rating: - Great bookEvery politician, every lawyer, every judge, and especially every citizen in America should read this book. It explains clearly and concisely how bad laws and frivolous lawsuits are undermining our country. Everything has to have warning labels, everything has to be dumbed down, anything remotely dangerous (such as the teeter-totter or playground slide) has to be eliminated, and teachers aren't allowed to punish bad kids for fear of being sued. Government unions make it impossible to fire incompetent workers, ... Read More |
