Rating: 
Summary: Great Organizing Concept
Review: Everyone who is an observer and thinker in America today processes at lot of data. Mister Barone's concept Hard America . . . Soft America gives one an organizer for processing bits and pieces of information, and his book helps immensely in doing this, plus it gives one more data.
His point that the hard and soft are fluid and continually changing is well taken.
The notion that Soft America hitches a ride on the back of Hard America should set many bells ringing.
Great book! Get it, and have a feast.
Tom in Ohio
Rating: 
Summary: Hard and Soft America in the Workplace
Review: As a new author myself (Swapping Lies, Deception in the Workplace) and founder of a small management consulting firm, I have a unique interest in how society influences the workplace. That's how I came about reading this book, from a business organizational perspective.
Despite the fact that it was written by a political commentator this is not necessarily a political book. It is very hard to hide one's bias since it is based in a belief system. Barone controls his leanings quite well. The book is, among other things, a social commentary, and these days business is more and more a reflection of society - all of it, the good and the bad.
Michael Barone describes a longtime struggle between hard and soft America. The subject is important because we can see that struggle in the workplace. Barone defines a line between hard and soft through varying degrees of accountability and competition. For example, an environment with very little competition and accountability is soft. Similarly, a hard environment would include tangible accountability and competition.
Although the business environment is and has been typically a hard one, the author describes how both hard and soft elements influence our society. Barone also includes an interesting history of hard and soft America.
This is a short book (under 200 pages) and easy to read. It is filled with historical perspective and a number of important learnings. Among many, I found this point particularly interesting, the difference between a herd and a pack. The herd: sheep waiting to take direction from a dog. The pack: a collection of wolves alert and ready to act together with others. It was an interesting thought on the last page of the book. Barone credits Glenn Reynolds for this thought. All in all I liked it.
Rating: 
Summary: Sweeping Generalities Disservice a More Complex Set of Issue
Review: As sweeping generalities go, this book ranks high in its attempt to use ambiguities as a replacement for specifics. In essence the book argues for the pre-eminence and necessity of being "hard" in order for America to be great. Michael Barone, former editor of U.S. News and World Report bounces around from topic to topic, settling on various issues long enough to throw out simple analyses that justifies the importance of being hard in the face of being "soft." The reader may interject the terms "conservative" for "hard" and "liberal" for "soft." I disagree with his generalities: the issue is two-fold when determining the best policy. The first issue is to find balance between the opposition. Few ideologies taken to an extreme are valuable. The Confucian ideal of finding the value in the middle of two ideas at odds with one another is valuable in an increasingly polarized world. The second issue is to actually go out on a limb and suggest that a specific ideological approach has value in certain situations; as these fluid situations change so must our ideologies. Nothing that exists in stasis, even religion, will survive without adaptation and change.
Rating:
Summary: A well argued philosophical theory
Review: Barone begins the book by contrasting the number of incompetent 18 year-old Americans with the number of remarkably competent 30 year-olds. Why do such shallow adolescents become such productive citizens? The answer lies in the hard reality of the American economy that insists that we get tough. That reality argues Barone makes us the most productive nation in the world.
But why are they so incompetent at 18? Because the education system in this country caters to whims, social experiments and self-esteem, but it doesn't force teenagers to confront the hardness of the real world. It's not until these kids reach the workforce that they are compelled to be serious.
In Europe it's almost the opposite. Their schools are tough and their children outperform ours, but those kids are dumped into a welfare state economy that coddles them the rest of their lives. Very few 30 years-old Europeans can compete with their American contemporaries.
American kids that do work harder when they are younger wind up in the most elite colleges. The irony is that they don't always appreciate how the hard road prepared them for greater success. Many of the ones that enter public service push for a softer America in the form of welfare, unemployment and government regulations.
Barone traces the two Americas back to World War II when big government teamed up with big labor and big business to run the war machine. Those economies of scale were supposed to make America soft yet productive. It looked efficient and we certainly won the war, but that model showed its flaws the in later years.
By the 1970s, auto manufacturers for instance were paying higher and higher union wages and American cars began to be overpriced compared to the new Japanese imports. It led to a crisis of what fashionable economic planners thought about production. All three of the big automakers were on the brink of collapse at one point or the other. They had been afraid to innovate suddenly they were forced to.
In addition, half of the top 100 industrial firms in 1974 were bankrupt or bought out by 2000 and yet the U.S. economy grew because hard realities were back. European economies, on the other hand, haven't grown that much in the last 20 years. Even economies like Japan that once scared us terribly failed to unseat us as the economic leaders.
These are just a few of the examples that Barones cites. And Barone does concede that America has been better off for certain kinds of softness, and many people who promote softness do it for the best of reasons. But Americans are better served with a steady dose of hardness.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Analysis of the USA's Strengths & Weaknesses
Review: Barone clearly delineates two very different modus operandi and exposes the defficiencies of one while illustrating the benefits of another. Thought-provoking and convincing, a must-read for anyone, conservative or liberal, who is interested in learning how our ideologies impact American life.
Rating: 
Summary: Who are the most coddled?
Review: Barone' ideogical biases are causing him to overlook the realities of who is really being coddled the most. If he wants to find the people who are most coddled, he needs to look at the private sector.Take, for example, the case of the corporate CEOs who get their multimillion dollar bonuses whether profits are up or down, whose income relative to their workers keeps getting bigger and bigger, and, if they do get fired, get rich golden parachutes that leave them rich for life. Contrast that with ordinary Americans, who if their job is sent abroad are lucky to get a few month's severance pay and inadequate job training so that they end up with a job that pays less and has fewer benefits. Another of the most coddled groups are people that are rich,not because they earned it, like Steve Jobs, but, rather becauese they inherited it, like Steve Forbes. If one really does not want coddling, the inheritance tax needs to be increased so that one can only become rich by one's own effort, and not without effort. The author undoubtedly makes valid points in a number of areas, but his obvious right-wing bias keeps him from seeing who is really being coddled.
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Summary: Another either/or book
Review: Barone, no matter how rational and intellectualized has again
made a right or left, good or bad and therefore extremely oversimplified the real discussion and history at hand. Neocons will use it as a saintly reference affirming their cherished opinions. The rest of us left, right, up, down will remain skeptical. Not worth the money-you can get it on any website.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing...puts everything in a whole new light...a must-read
Review: I can't believe how badly the previous reviewer missed the boat. Barone's analysis in "Hard America, Soft America" is brilliant. He provides amazing insight into what's going on in this country. And this is not just some political book, as that reviewer implied. It makes you realize that so many of our strengths--and weaknesses--as a country are connected. Barone looks at everything from our schools to our economy to our legal system to our military. Take a step back from the day-to-say political disputes and really look at what's happening: that's what Barone does here. You really have to read "Hard America, Soft America".
Rating:
Summary: Amazing...puts everything in a whole new light...a must-read
Review: I can't believe how badly the previous reviewer missed the boat. Barone's analysis in "Hard America, Soft America" is brilliant. He provides amazing insight into what's going on in this country. And this is not just some political book, as that reviewer implied. It makes you realize that so many of our strengths--and weaknesses--as a country are connected. Barone looks at everything from our schools to our economy to our legal system to our military. Take a step back from the day-to-say political disputes and really look at what's happening: that's what Barone does here. You really have to read "Hard America, Soft America".
Rating:
Summary: Gives a new perspective on issues in America
Review: I had a manager who use to often comment that the right perspective could be worth as much as 20 IQ points. How you see a problem affects your ability to solve it. Even the smartest people in the world have trouble solving problems if they see the problems from a bad perspective.
Michael Brone's perspective on trends and problems in American society may be worth 20 IQ points. He looks at many areas in America and breaks them down into "Hard" or "Soft". For the purposes of the book "Hard" is where there is competition and accountability; people suffer or reap the consequences of their actions. "Soft" is when people are protected from competition and not held accountable; they are coddled.
The book explores changes in Education, Big Business, Government, Big Unions, Crime, Military, and other areas. One of the interesting points made in the book is that there is constant change. For example Big Business was soft 50 years ago and has grown harder; however, Education has only grown softer over the last 50 years. Michael Barone shows the consequences of what happens when an area is hard or soft. While he acknowledges there are reasons for softness, Michael Barone clearly believes that it is best for all parts of society to have some degree of hardness.
The book is well written and the material is well presented. It is a quick read; the main part of the book is only 162 pages. I would have liked it to be longer. It was very thought provoking and gave me a number of ideas to think about. I found it worth reading, and felt it was a good investment of my time.
The approach of looking at issues in terms of Hard or Soft does provide some good insights. Michael Barone has provided a unique perspective on life in America over the last hundred years. If you want to improve your understanding of many of the important modern issues, this is a good book to read.
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