Tag: Class

Topics

Books

The Rediscovery of Character

– James Q. Wilson, The Public Interest, Fall 1985.
Excerpt: Charles Murray, whose 1984 book, Losing Ground, has done so much to focus attention on the problem of welfare, generally endorses the economic explanation for the decline of… More

The Coming White Underclass

– Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1993.
Excerpt: Every once in a while the sky really is falling, and this seems to be the case with the latest national figures on illegitimacy. The unadorned statistic is that, in 1991, 1.2… More

A Conversation with Charles Murray

– Transcript, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, October 1994.
Excerpt: MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I’m Ben Wattenberg. Welcome to a special two-part edition of Think Tank. You know, sometimes an argument within the scholarly community is so fierce… More

Book Discussion on The Bell Curve

– Video, C-SPAN, November 8, 1994.
Summary: The co-author discussed his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The book focuses on human intelligence and the way social problems are affected… More

Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate

– Ruth Lister, ed., IEA Health and Welfare Unit in association with The Sunday Times London, 1996.
Excerpt: IN 1989 Charles Murray visited Britain in search of the ‘underclass’, courtesy of The Sunday Times. Four years later he returned to warn that the crisis of the ‘underclass’… More

A Stroll Through the Income Spectrum

– American Enterprise, July/August 1996.
Excerpt: The link between income and standard of living used to be simple: People who made more money lived better. They drove a Buick, not a Chevy. They moved from an upstairs flat to a… More

And Now for the Bad News

– Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1998.
Excerpt: Good news is everywhere. Crime rates are falling; welfare rolls are plunging; unemployment is at rock bottom; teenage births are down. Name an indicator, economic or social, and… More

Family Decay Hurts Equality

– American Enterprise, April/May 2002.
Excerpt: Americans hate the idea of social classes. Accordingly, we try to pretend we don’t have any. Up to 80 percent of survey respondents in our country will tell the interview… More

The Advantages of Social Apartheid

– Sunday Times (London), April 4, 2005.
Excerpt: Underclass is an ugly word, and we live in an age that abhors ugly words, so it is good to hear that the Blair government has devised a cheerier label: Neet, an acronym for “not… More

The Hallmark of the Underclass

– Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2005.
Excerpt: Watching the courage of ordinary low-income people as they deal with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, it is hard to decide which politicians are more contemptible —… More

Twelve Ideas for the Middle Class

– National Review, February 9, 2009.
Excerpt: Contemporary conservatism has too often lost touch with the concrete concerns of middle-class America. For a long time, conservatism thrived politically on the domestic troika of… More

The Happiness of the People

– Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, March 11, 2009.
Excerpt: My text is drawn from Federalist 62, probably written by James Madison: “A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness… More

The Tea Party Warns of a New Elite. They Are Right

– Washington Post, October 24, 2010.
Excerpt: The tea party appears to be of one mind on at least one thing: America has been taken over by a New Elite. “On one side, we have the elites,” Fox News host Glenn Beck explained… More

Charles Murray on the State of White America

– Video, C-SPAN, April 4, 2011.
Summary: Author and political scientist Charles Murray spoke about American cultural values and economic disparity. He said that over the last half century, America had developed not only… More

Belmont and Fishtown

– The New Criterion, January 2012.
Excerpt: American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been seen as different, even peculiar, to people around the… More

The Great Divorce by David Brooks

– David Brooks, New York Times, January 30, 2012.
Excerpt: I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s Coming Apart. I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes… More

The Virtue Deficit

– Ron Haskins, National Review, February 6, 2012.
Excerpt: Charles Murray writes important and provocative books. His latest book, Coming Apart, joins Losing Ground (1984) and The Bell Curve (1994) as, in my view, among his most important… More

Five Myths About White People

– Washington Post, February 10, 2012.
Excerpt: 1. Working-class whites are more religious than upper-class whites. This is a pervasive misconception encouraged by liberals who conflate the religious right with the working… More

Narrowing the Class Divide

– New York Times, March 7, 2012.
Excerpt: THERE’S been a lot of commentary from all sides about my recently published book, “Coming Apart,” which deals with the divergence between the professional and working classes… More

Why Economics Can’t Explain Our Cultural Divide

– Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2012.
Excerpt: Some reviewers of “Coming Apart,” my new book about the growing cultural divide between America’s upper and lower classes, have faulted me for ignoring the role… More

Charles Murray on Colbert Report

– Video, The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, March 27, 2012.
Summary: Charles Murray talks about his book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, and suggests a way to address the growing division between the classes. (7:24)

Charles Murray on Coming Apart

– Video, Hoover Institution, April 10, 2012.
Summary: This week on Uncommon Knowledge, longtime American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray discusses his controversial new book, Coming Apart, about what American was, is, and… More

“Coming Apart” and Fishtown

– Philadelphia Inquirer, April 23, 2012.
Excerpt: Coming Apart, the book I published a few months ago, tracks the cultural divergences in America’s classes from 1960 to 2010, focusing on whites as a way of getting people to… More

A Tale of Two Cities

– R. Shep Melnick, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2012.
Excerpt: Charles Murray knows how to draw attention. Soon after Coming Apart appeared, nearly everyone who follows public affairs knew of the yawning gap separating the declining,… More

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010

– (New York: Crown Forum, 2012.)
Summary from Publisher: In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way… More

Poker is America

– New York Times, February 24, 2013.
Excerpt: Let’s start by getting this straight: poker is about money. If you took the money out of it, I wouldn’t play. But even when I lose, I’ve had a good time. I love playing poker… More

Charles Murray: Are You a Snob? Take the Test.

– Video, Big Think, March 8, 2013.
Summary: American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray has designed a quiz he hopes will have “a salutary effect on bringing to people’s attention the degree to which… More

The Bell Curve Revisited

– Video, the Program on Constitutional Government, Harvard University, March 14, 2014.
Summary: Charles Murray, on “The Bell Curve Revisited.” Charles Murray is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of famous and influential books, among… More

Are We Really Coming Apart?

– Video, panel at the Aspen Institute, March 18, 2014.
Summary: Two very different scholars of American society look at the United States and the growing gap in values and behaviors among communities and classes within them. What is happening… More

Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’

– Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015.
Excerpt: Spring is here, which means it’s time for elite colleges to send out acceptance letters. Some will go to athletes, the children of influential alumni and those who round out the… More

Kids Today

– Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2015.
Excerpt: My takeaway from all this was expressed in the closing chapter of my own work on Putnam’s topic, Coming Apart (2012). Very briefly, I don’t think America’s civic culture will… More

Essays

The Rediscovery of Character

– James Q. Wilson, The Public Interest, Fall 1985.
Excerpt: Charles Murray, whose 1984 book, Losing Ground, has done so much to focus attention on the problem of welfare, generally endorses the economic explanation for the decline of… More

The Coming White Underclass

– Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1993.
Excerpt: Every once in a while the sky really is falling, and this seems to be the case with the latest national figures on illegitimacy. The unadorned statistic is that, in 1991, 1.2… More

A Conversation with Charles Murray

– Transcript, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, October 1994.
Excerpt: MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I’m Ben Wattenberg. Welcome to a special two-part edition of Think Tank. You know, sometimes an argument within the scholarly community is so fierce… More

Book Discussion on The Bell Curve

– Video, C-SPAN, November 8, 1994.
Summary: The co-author discussed his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The book focuses on human intelligence and the way social problems are affected… More

Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate

– Ruth Lister, ed., IEA Health and Welfare Unit in association with The Sunday Times London, 1996.
Excerpt: IN 1989 Charles Murray visited Britain in search of the ‘underclass’, courtesy of The Sunday Times. Four years later he returned to warn that the crisis of the ‘underclass’… More

A Stroll Through the Income Spectrum

– American Enterprise, July/August 1996.
Excerpt: The link between income and standard of living used to be simple: People who made more money lived better. They drove a Buick, not a Chevy. They moved from an upstairs flat to a… More

And Now for the Bad News

– Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1998.
Excerpt: Good news is everywhere. Crime rates are falling; welfare rolls are plunging; unemployment is at rock bottom; teenage births are down. Name an indicator, economic or social, and… More

Family Decay Hurts Equality

– American Enterprise, April/May 2002.
Excerpt: Americans hate the idea of social classes. Accordingly, we try to pretend we don’t have any. Up to 80 percent of survey respondents in our country will tell the interview… More

The Advantages of Social Apartheid

– Sunday Times (London), April 4, 2005.
Excerpt: Underclass is an ugly word, and we live in an age that abhors ugly words, so it is good to hear that the Blair government has devised a cheerier label: Neet, an acronym for “not… More

The Hallmark of the Underclass

– Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2005.
Excerpt: Watching the courage of ordinary low-income people as they deal with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, it is hard to decide which politicians are more contemptible —… More

Twelve Ideas for the Middle Class

– National Review, February 9, 2009.
Excerpt: Contemporary conservatism has too often lost touch with the concrete concerns of middle-class America. For a long time, conservatism thrived politically on the domestic troika of… More

The Happiness of the People

– Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, March 11, 2009.
Excerpt: My text is drawn from Federalist 62, probably written by James Madison: “A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness… More

The Tea Party Warns of a New Elite. They Are Right

– Washington Post, October 24, 2010.
Excerpt: The tea party appears to be of one mind on at least one thing: America has been taken over by a New Elite. “On one side, we have the elites,” Fox News host Glenn Beck explained… More

Charles Murray on the State of White America

– Video, C-SPAN, April 4, 2011.
Summary: Author and political scientist Charles Murray spoke about American cultural values and economic disparity. He said that over the last half century, America had developed not only… More

Belmont and Fishtown

– The New Criterion, January 2012.
Excerpt: American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been seen as different, even peculiar, to people around the… More

The Great Divorce by David Brooks

– David Brooks, New York Times, January 30, 2012.
Excerpt: I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s Coming Apart. I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes… More

The Virtue Deficit

– Ron Haskins, National Review, February 6, 2012.
Excerpt: Charles Murray writes important and provocative books. His latest book, Coming Apart, joins Losing Ground (1984) and The Bell Curve (1994) as, in my view, among his most important… More

Five Myths About White People

– Washington Post, February 10, 2012.
Excerpt: 1. Working-class whites are more religious than upper-class whites. This is a pervasive misconception encouraged by liberals who conflate the religious right with the working… More

Narrowing the Class Divide

– New York Times, March 7, 2012.
Excerpt: THERE’S been a lot of commentary from all sides about my recently published book, “Coming Apart,” which deals with the divergence between the professional and working classes… More

Why Economics Can’t Explain Our Cultural Divide

– Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2012.
Excerpt: Some reviewers of “Coming Apart,” my new book about the growing cultural divide between America’s upper and lower classes, have faulted me for ignoring the role… More

Charles Murray on Colbert Report

– Video, The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, March 27, 2012.
Summary: Charles Murray talks about his book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, and suggests a way to address the growing division between the classes. (7:24)

Charles Murray on Coming Apart

– Video, Hoover Institution, April 10, 2012.
Summary: This week on Uncommon Knowledge, longtime American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray discusses his controversial new book, Coming Apart, about what American was, is, and… More

“Coming Apart” and Fishtown

– Philadelphia Inquirer, April 23, 2012.
Excerpt: Coming Apart, the book I published a few months ago, tracks the cultural divergences in America’s classes from 1960 to 2010, focusing on whites as a way of getting people to… More

A Tale of Two Cities

– R. Shep Melnick, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2012.
Excerpt: Charles Murray knows how to draw attention. Soon after Coming Apart appeared, nearly everyone who follows public affairs knew of the yawning gap separating the declining,… More

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010

– (New York: Crown Forum, 2012.)
Summary from Publisher: In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way… More

Poker is America

– New York Times, February 24, 2013.
Excerpt: Let’s start by getting this straight: poker is about money. If you took the money out of it, I wouldn’t play. But even when I lose, I’ve had a good time. I love playing poker… More

Charles Murray: Are You a Snob? Take the Test.

– Video, Big Think, March 8, 2013.
Summary: American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray has designed a quiz he hopes will have “a salutary effect on bringing to people’s attention the degree to which… More

The Bell Curve Revisited

– Video, the Program on Constitutional Government, Harvard University, March 14, 2014.
Summary: Charles Murray, on “The Bell Curve Revisited.” Charles Murray is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of famous and influential books, among… More

Are We Really Coming Apart?

– Video, panel at the Aspen Institute, March 18, 2014.
Summary: Two very different scholars of American society look at the United States and the growing gap in values and behaviors among communities and classes within them. What is happening… More

Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’

– Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015.
Excerpt: Spring is here, which means it’s time for elite colleges to send out acceptance letters. Some will go to athletes, the children of influential alumni and those who round out the… More

Kids Today

– Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2015.
Excerpt: My takeaway from all this was expressed in the closing chapter of my own work on Putnam’s topic, Coming Apart (2012). Very briefly, I don’t think America’s civic culture will… More

Commentary

The Rediscovery of Character

– James Q. Wilson, The Public Interest, Fall 1985.
Excerpt: Charles Murray, whose 1984 book, Losing Ground, has done so much to focus attention on the problem of welfare, generally endorses the economic explanation for the decline of… More

The Coming White Underclass

– Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1993.
Excerpt: Every once in a while the sky really is falling, and this seems to be the case with the latest national figures on illegitimacy. The unadorned statistic is that, in 1991, 1.2… More

A Conversation with Charles Murray

– Transcript, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, October 1994.
Excerpt: MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I’m Ben Wattenberg. Welcome to a special two-part edition of Think Tank. You know, sometimes an argument within the scholarly community is so fierce… More

Book Discussion on The Bell Curve

– Video, C-SPAN, November 8, 1994.
Summary: The co-author discussed his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The book focuses on human intelligence and the way social problems are affected… More

Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate

– Ruth Lister, ed., IEA Health and Welfare Unit in association with The Sunday Times London, 1996.
Excerpt: IN 1989 Charles Murray visited Britain in search of the ‘underclass’, courtesy of The Sunday Times. Four years later he returned to warn that the crisis of the ‘underclass’… More

A Stroll Through the Income Spectrum

– American Enterprise, July/August 1996.
Excerpt: The link between income and standard of living used to be simple: People who made more money lived better. They drove a Buick, not a Chevy. They moved from an upstairs flat to a… More

And Now for the Bad News

– Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1998.
Excerpt: Good news is everywhere. Crime rates are falling; welfare rolls are plunging; unemployment is at rock bottom; teenage births are down. Name an indicator, economic or social, and… More

Family Decay Hurts Equality

– American Enterprise, April/May 2002.
Excerpt: Americans hate the idea of social classes. Accordingly, we try to pretend we don’t have any. Up to 80 percent of survey respondents in our country will tell the interview… More

The Advantages of Social Apartheid

– Sunday Times (London), April 4, 2005.
Excerpt: Underclass is an ugly word, and we live in an age that abhors ugly words, so it is good to hear that the Blair government has devised a cheerier label: Neet, an acronym for “not… More

The Hallmark of the Underclass

– Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2005.
Excerpt: Watching the courage of ordinary low-income people as they deal with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, it is hard to decide which politicians are more contemptible —… More

Twelve Ideas for the Middle Class

– National Review, February 9, 2009.
Excerpt: Contemporary conservatism has too often lost touch with the concrete concerns of middle-class America. For a long time, conservatism thrived politically on the domestic troika of… More

The Happiness of the People

– Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, March 11, 2009.
Excerpt: My text is drawn from Federalist 62, probably written by James Madison: “A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness… More

The Tea Party Warns of a New Elite. They Are Right

– Washington Post, October 24, 2010.
Excerpt: The tea party appears to be of one mind on at least one thing: America has been taken over by a New Elite. “On one side, we have the elites,” Fox News host Glenn Beck explained… More

Charles Murray on the State of White America

– Video, C-SPAN, April 4, 2011.
Summary: Author and political scientist Charles Murray spoke about American cultural values and economic disparity. He said that over the last half century, America had developed not only… More

Belmont and Fishtown

– The New Criterion, January 2012.
Excerpt: American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been seen as different, even peculiar, to people around the… More

The Great Divorce by David Brooks

– David Brooks, New York Times, January 30, 2012.
Excerpt: I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s Coming Apart. I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes… More

The Virtue Deficit

– Ron Haskins, National Review, February 6, 2012.
Excerpt: Charles Murray writes important and provocative books. His latest book, Coming Apart, joins Losing Ground (1984) and The Bell Curve (1994) as, in my view, among his most important… More

Five Myths About White People

– Washington Post, February 10, 2012.
Excerpt: 1. Working-class whites are more religious than upper-class whites. This is a pervasive misconception encouraged by liberals who conflate the religious right with the working… More

Narrowing the Class Divide

– New York Times, March 7, 2012.
Excerpt: THERE’S been a lot of commentary from all sides about my recently published book, “Coming Apart,” which deals with the divergence between the professional and working classes… More

Why Economics Can’t Explain Our Cultural Divide

– Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2012.
Excerpt: Some reviewers of “Coming Apart,” my new book about the growing cultural divide between America’s upper and lower classes, have faulted me for ignoring the role… More

Charles Murray on Colbert Report

– Video, The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, March 27, 2012.
Summary: Charles Murray talks about his book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, and suggests a way to address the growing division between the classes. (7:24)

Charles Murray on Coming Apart

– Video, Hoover Institution, April 10, 2012.
Summary: This week on Uncommon Knowledge, longtime American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray discusses his controversial new book, Coming Apart, about what American was, is, and… More

“Coming Apart” and Fishtown

– Philadelphia Inquirer, April 23, 2012.
Excerpt: Coming Apart, the book I published a few months ago, tracks the cultural divergences in America’s classes from 1960 to 2010, focusing on whites as a way of getting people to… More

A Tale of Two Cities

– R. Shep Melnick, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2012.
Excerpt: Charles Murray knows how to draw attention. Soon after Coming Apart appeared, nearly everyone who follows public affairs knew of the yawning gap separating the declining,… More

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010

– (New York: Crown Forum, 2012.)
Summary from Publisher: In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way… More

Poker is America

– New York Times, February 24, 2013.
Excerpt: Let’s start by getting this straight: poker is about money. If you took the money out of it, I wouldn’t play. But even when I lose, I’ve had a good time. I love playing poker… More

Charles Murray: Are You a Snob? Take the Test.

– Video, Big Think, March 8, 2013.
Summary: American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray has designed a quiz he hopes will have “a salutary effect on bringing to people’s attention the degree to which… More

The Bell Curve Revisited

– Video, the Program on Constitutional Government, Harvard University, March 14, 2014.
Summary: Charles Murray, on “The Bell Curve Revisited.” Charles Murray is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of famous and influential books, among… More

Are We Really Coming Apart?

– Video, panel at the Aspen Institute, March 18, 2014.
Summary: Two very different scholars of American society look at the United States and the growing gap in values and behaviors among communities and classes within them. What is happening… More

Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’

– Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015.
Excerpt: Spring is here, which means it’s time for elite colleges to send out acceptance letters. Some will go to athletes, the children of influential alumni and those who round out the… More

Kids Today

– Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2015.
Excerpt: My takeaway from all this was expressed in the closing chapter of my own work on Putnam’s topic, Coming Apart (2012). Very briefly, I don’t think America’s civic culture will… More

Multimedia

The Rediscovery of Character

– James Q. Wilson, The Public Interest, Fall 1985.
Excerpt: Charles Murray, whose 1984 book, Losing Ground, has done so much to focus attention on the problem of welfare, generally endorses the economic explanation for the decline of… More

The Coming White Underclass

– Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1993.
Excerpt: Every once in a while the sky really is falling, and this seems to be the case with the latest national figures on illegitimacy. The unadorned statistic is that, in 1991, 1.2… More

A Conversation with Charles Murray

– Transcript, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, October 1994.
Excerpt: MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I’m Ben Wattenberg. Welcome to a special two-part edition of Think Tank. You know, sometimes an argument within the scholarly community is so fierce… More

Book Discussion on The Bell Curve

– Video, C-SPAN, November 8, 1994.
Summary: The co-author discussed his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The book focuses on human intelligence and the way social problems are affected… More

Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate

– Ruth Lister, ed., IEA Health and Welfare Unit in association with The Sunday Times London, 1996.
Excerpt: IN 1989 Charles Murray visited Britain in search of the ‘underclass’, courtesy of The Sunday Times. Four years later he returned to warn that the crisis of the ‘underclass’… More

A Stroll Through the Income Spectrum

– American Enterprise, July/August 1996.
Excerpt: The link between income and standard of living used to be simple: People who made more money lived better. They drove a Buick, not a Chevy. They moved from an upstairs flat to a… More

And Now for the Bad News

– Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1998.
Excerpt: Good news is everywhere. Crime rates are falling; welfare rolls are plunging; unemployment is at rock bottom; teenage births are down. Name an indicator, economic or social, and… More

Family Decay Hurts Equality

– American Enterprise, April/May 2002.
Excerpt: Americans hate the idea of social classes. Accordingly, we try to pretend we don’t have any. Up to 80 percent of survey respondents in our country will tell the interview… More

The Advantages of Social Apartheid

– Sunday Times (London), April 4, 2005.
Excerpt: Underclass is an ugly word, and we live in an age that abhors ugly words, so it is good to hear that the Blair government has devised a cheerier label: Neet, an acronym for “not… More

The Hallmark of the Underclass

– Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2005.
Excerpt: Watching the courage of ordinary low-income people as they deal with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, it is hard to decide which politicians are more contemptible —… More

Twelve Ideas for the Middle Class

– National Review, February 9, 2009.
Excerpt: Contemporary conservatism has too often lost touch with the concrete concerns of middle-class America. For a long time, conservatism thrived politically on the domestic troika of… More

The Happiness of the People

– Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, March 11, 2009.
Excerpt: My text is drawn from Federalist 62, probably written by James Madison: “A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness… More

The Tea Party Warns of a New Elite. They Are Right

– Washington Post, October 24, 2010.
Excerpt: The tea party appears to be of one mind on at least one thing: America has been taken over by a New Elite. “On one side, we have the elites,” Fox News host Glenn Beck explained… More

Charles Murray on the State of White America

– Video, C-SPAN, April 4, 2011.
Summary: Author and political scientist Charles Murray spoke about American cultural values and economic disparity. He said that over the last half century, America had developed not only… More

Belmont and Fishtown

– The New Criterion, January 2012.
Excerpt: American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been seen as different, even peculiar, to people around the… More

The Great Divorce by David Brooks

– David Brooks, New York Times, January 30, 2012.
Excerpt: I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s Coming Apart. I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes… More

The Virtue Deficit

– Ron Haskins, National Review, February 6, 2012.
Excerpt: Charles Murray writes important and provocative books. His latest book, Coming Apart, joins Losing Ground (1984) and The Bell Curve (1994) as, in my view, among his most important… More

Five Myths About White People

– Washington Post, February 10, 2012.
Excerpt: 1. Working-class whites are more religious than upper-class whites. This is a pervasive misconception encouraged by liberals who conflate the religious right with the working… More

Narrowing the Class Divide

– New York Times, March 7, 2012.
Excerpt: THERE’S been a lot of commentary from all sides about my recently published book, “Coming Apart,” which deals with the divergence between the professional and working classes… More

Why Economics Can’t Explain Our Cultural Divide

– Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2012.
Excerpt: Some reviewers of “Coming Apart,” my new book about the growing cultural divide between America’s upper and lower classes, have faulted me for ignoring the role… More

Charles Murray on Colbert Report

– Video, The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, March 27, 2012.
Summary: Charles Murray talks about his book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, and suggests a way to address the growing division between the classes. (7:24)

Charles Murray on Coming Apart

– Video, Hoover Institution, April 10, 2012.
Summary: This week on Uncommon Knowledge, longtime American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray discusses his controversial new book, Coming Apart, about what American was, is, and… More

“Coming Apart” and Fishtown

– Philadelphia Inquirer, April 23, 2012.
Excerpt: Coming Apart, the book I published a few months ago, tracks the cultural divergences in America’s classes from 1960 to 2010, focusing on whites as a way of getting people to… More

A Tale of Two Cities

– R. Shep Melnick, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2012.
Excerpt: Charles Murray knows how to draw attention. Soon after Coming Apart appeared, nearly everyone who follows public affairs knew of the yawning gap separating the declining,… More

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010

– (New York: Crown Forum, 2012.)
Summary from Publisher: In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way… More

Poker is America

– New York Times, February 24, 2013.
Excerpt: Let’s start by getting this straight: poker is about money. If you took the money out of it, I wouldn’t play. But even when I lose, I’ve had a good time. I love playing poker… More

Charles Murray: Are You a Snob? Take the Test.

– Video, Big Think, March 8, 2013.
Summary: American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray has designed a quiz he hopes will have “a salutary effect on bringing to people’s attention the degree to which… More

The Bell Curve Revisited

– Video, the Program on Constitutional Government, Harvard University, March 14, 2014.
Summary: Charles Murray, on “The Bell Curve Revisited.” Charles Murray is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of famous and influential books, among… More

Are We Really Coming Apart?

– Video, panel at the Aspen Institute, March 18, 2014.
Summary: Two very different scholars of American society look at the United States and the growing gap in values and behaviors among communities and classes within them. What is happening… More

Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’

– Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015.
Excerpt: Spring is here, which means it’s time for elite colleges to send out acceptance letters. Some will go to athletes, the children of influential alumni and those who round out the… More

Kids Today

– Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2015.
Excerpt: My takeaway from all this was expressed in the closing chapter of my own work on Putnam’s topic, Coming Apart (2012). Very briefly, I don’t think America’s civic culture will… More

Teaching

The Rediscovery of Character

– James Q. Wilson, The Public Interest, Fall 1985.
Excerpt: Charles Murray, whose 1984 book, Losing Ground, has done so much to focus attention on the problem of welfare, generally endorses the economic explanation for the decline of… More

The Coming White Underclass

– Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1993.
Excerpt: Every once in a while the sky really is falling, and this seems to be the case with the latest national figures on illegitimacy. The unadorned statistic is that, in 1991, 1.2… More

A Conversation with Charles Murray

– Transcript, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, October 1994.
Excerpt: MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I’m Ben Wattenberg. Welcome to a special two-part edition of Think Tank. You know, sometimes an argument within the scholarly community is so fierce… More

Book Discussion on The Bell Curve

– Video, C-SPAN, November 8, 1994.
Summary: The co-author discussed his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The book focuses on human intelligence and the way social problems are affected… More

Charles Murray and the Underclass: The Developing Debate

– Ruth Lister, ed., IEA Health and Welfare Unit in association with The Sunday Times London, 1996.
Excerpt: IN 1989 Charles Murray visited Britain in search of the ‘underclass’, courtesy of The Sunday Times. Four years later he returned to warn that the crisis of the ‘underclass’… More

A Stroll Through the Income Spectrum

– American Enterprise, July/August 1996.
Excerpt: The link between income and standard of living used to be simple: People who made more money lived better. They drove a Buick, not a Chevy. They moved from an upstairs flat to a… More

And Now for the Bad News

– Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1998.
Excerpt: Good news is everywhere. Crime rates are falling; welfare rolls are plunging; unemployment is at rock bottom; teenage births are down. Name an indicator, economic or social, and… More

Family Decay Hurts Equality

– American Enterprise, April/May 2002.
Excerpt: Americans hate the idea of social classes. Accordingly, we try to pretend we don’t have any. Up to 80 percent of survey respondents in our country will tell the interview… More

The Advantages of Social Apartheid

– Sunday Times (London), April 4, 2005.
Excerpt: Underclass is an ugly word, and we live in an age that abhors ugly words, so it is good to hear that the Blair government has devised a cheerier label: Neet, an acronym for “not… More

The Hallmark of the Underclass

– Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2005.
Excerpt: Watching the courage of ordinary low-income people as they deal with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, it is hard to decide which politicians are more contemptible —… More

Twelve Ideas for the Middle Class

– National Review, February 9, 2009.
Excerpt: Contemporary conservatism has too often lost touch with the concrete concerns of middle-class America. For a long time, conservatism thrived politically on the domestic troika of… More

The Happiness of the People

– Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, March 11, 2009.
Excerpt: My text is drawn from Federalist 62, probably written by James Madison: “A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness… More

The Tea Party Warns of a New Elite. They Are Right

– Washington Post, October 24, 2010.
Excerpt: The tea party appears to be of one mind on at least one thing: America has been taken over by a New Elite. “On one side, we have the elites,” Fox News host Glenn Beck explained… More

Charles Murray on the State of White America

– Video, C-SPAN, April 4, 2011.
Summary: Author and political scientist Charles Murray spoke about American cultural values and economic disparity. He said that over the last half century, America had developed not only… More

Belmont and Fishtown

– The New Criterion, January 2012.
Excerpt: American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been seen as different, even peculiar, to people around the… More

The Great Divorce by David Brooks

– David Brooks, New York Times, January 30, 2012.
Excerpt: I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s Coming Apart. I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes… More

The Virtue Deficit

– Ron Haskins, National Review, February 6, 2012.
Excerpt: Charles Murray writes important and provocative books. His latest book, Coming Apart, joins Losing Ground (1984) and The Bell Curve (1994) as, in my view, among his most important… More

Five Myths About White People

– Washington Post, February 10, 2012.
Excerpt: 1. Working-class whites are more religious than upper-class whites. This is a pervasive misconception encouraged by liberals who conflate the religious right with the working… More

Narrowing the Class Divide

– New York Times, March 7, 2012.
Excerpt: THERE’S been a lot of commentary from all sides about my recently published book, “Coming Apart,” which deals with the divergence between the professional and working classes… More

Why Economics Can’t Explain Our Cultural Divide

– Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2012.
Excerpt: Some reviewers of “Coming Apart,” my new book about the growing cultural divide between America’s upper and lower classes, have faulted me for ignoring the role… More

Charles Murray on Colbert Report

– Video, The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, March 27, 2012.
Summary: Charles Murray talks about his book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, and suggests a way to address the growing division between the classes. (7:24)

Charles Murray on Coming Apart

– Video, Hoover Institution, April 10, 2012.
Summary: This week on Uncommon Knowledge, longtime American Enterprise Institute fellow Charles Murray discusses his controversial new book, Coming Apart, about what American was, is, and… More

“Coming Apart” and Fishtown

– Philadelphia Inquirer, April 23, 2012.
Excerpt: Coming Apart, the book I published a few months ago, tracks the cultural divergences in America’s classes from 1960 to 2010, focusing on whites as a way of getting people to… More

A Tale of Two Cities

– R. Shep Melnick, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2012.
Excerpt: Charles Murray knows how to draw attention. Soon after Coming Apart appeared, nearly everyone who follows public affairs knew of the yawning gap separating the declining,… More

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010

– (New York: Crown Forum, 2012.)
Summary from Publisher: In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way… More

Poker is America

– New York Times, February 24, 2013.
Excerpt: Let’s start by getting this straight: poker is about money. If you took the money out of it, I wouldn’t play. But even when I lose, I’ve had a good time. I love playing poker… More

Charles Murray: Are You a Snob? Take the Test.

– Video, Big Think, March 8, 2013.
Summary: American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray has designed a quiz he hopes will have “a salutary effect on bringing to people’s attention the degree to which… More

The Bell Curve Revisited

– Video, the Program on Constitutional Government, Harvard University, March 14, 2014.
Summary: Charles Murray, on “The Bell Curve Revisited.” Charles Murray is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of famous and influential books, among… More

Are We Really Coming Apart?

– Video, panel at the Aspen Institute, March 18, 2014.
Summary: Two very different scholars of American society look at the United States and the growing gap in values and behaviors among communities and classes within them. What is happening… More

Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’

– Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015.
Excerpt: Spring is here, which means it’s time for elite colleges to send out acceptance letters. Some will go to athletes, the children of influential alumni and those who round out the… More

Kids Today

– Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2015.
Excerpt: My takeaway from all this was expressed in the closing chapter of my own work on Putnam’s topic, Coming Apart (2012). Very briefly, I don’t think America’s civic culture will… More