The adviser to Senator Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, and President Bill Clinton proves that small is big by identifying 75 hidden-in-plain-sight trends that are moving America, revealing that the nation is no longer a melting pot but a collection of communities with many individual tastes and lifestyles. "The ideas in his book will help you see the world in a new way." --Bill Clinton "Mark Penn has a keen mind and a fascinating sense of what makes America tick, and you see it on every page of Microtrends ." --Bill Gates In 1982, readers discovered Megatrends . In 2000, The Tipping Point entered the lexicon. Now, in Microtrends , one of the most respected and sought-after analysts in the world articulates a new way of understanding how we live. Mark Penn, the man who identified "Soccer Moms" as a crucial constituency in President Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, is known for his ability to detect relatively small patterns of behavior in our culture-microtrends that are wielding great influence on business, politics, and our personal lives. Only one percent of the public, or three million people, is enough to launch a business or social movement. Relying on some of the best data available, Penn identifies more than 70 microtrends in religion, leisure, politics, and family life that are changing the way we live. Among them: People are retiring but continuing to work. Teens are turning to knitting. Geeks are becoming the most sociable people around. Women are driving technology. Dads are older than ever and spending more time with their kids than in the past. You have to look at and interpret data to know what's going on, and that conventional wisdom is almost always wrong and outdated. The nation is no longer a melting pot. We are a collection of communities with many individual tastes and lifestyles. Those who recognize these emerging groups will prosper. Penn shows readers how to identify the microtrends that can transform a business enterprise, tip an election, spark a movement, or change your life. In today's world, small groups can have the biggest impact.

"Where else but in America," captains of industry are fond of saying, "could a penniless immigrant like Andrew Carnegie achieve so much?" "Any place else that has reached the same stage of industrial development," is the answer implicit in Social Mobility. The authors conclude, somewhat surprisingly, that is not noticeably easier to pull oneself up by the bootstraps in the "Land of Opportunity" than it is in a number of other countries. The very process of industrialization, with its growing demands for skilled management, prevents an elite in any nation form permanently establishing itself in a position of exclusive superiority. Even in states where neither political institutions nor official ideologies favor upward mobility, increasing industrialization requires a growing--and, consequently, a changing--elite class. The authors are concerned primarily with mobility in the total population, with movements into and out of the working class, though they report extensively on the social origins of business leaders in various countries. They deal, too, with the different values of different societies and with the motivation of the socially mobile. Solidly based on examination of studies in more than ten languages and of raw data from unpublished works, this is the first attempt in thirty years to bring together in one volume what is known of social mobility around the world. Here is the first systematic comparison of mobility patterns in such diverse countries as Sweden and Italy, Great Britain and Japan--a comparison backed by statistics and given added meaning by discussions of the causes and consequences of mobility. The authors analyze in detail the political implications of mobility and they explore the relationship between education and mobility. Their discussions of factors making for success or failure in school, of the role of intelligence in mobility, of the effects on children of growing up in various environments, and of the varying personalities of the mobile and non-mobile bring together the work of both psychologists and sociologists. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.

With his groundbreaking and controversial DIM hypothesis, Dr. Leonard Peikoff casts a penetrating new light on the process of human thought, and thereby on Western culture and history. In this far-reaching study, Peikoff identifies the three methods people use to integrate concrete data into a whole, as when connecting diverse experiments by a scientific theory, or separate laws into a Constitution, or single events into a story. The first method, in which data is integrated through rational means, he calls Integration. The second, which employs non-rational means, he calls Misintegration. The third is Disintegration—which is nihilism, the desire to tear things apart. In The DIM Hypothesis Peikoff demonstrates the power of these three methods in shaping the West, by using the categories to examine the culturally representative fields of literature, physics, education, and politics. His analysis illustrates how the historical trends in each field have been dominated by one of these three categories, not only today but during the whole progression of Western culture from its beginning in Ancient Greece. Extrapolating from the historical pattern he identifies, Peikoff concludes by explaining why the lights of the West are going out—and predicts the most likely future for the United States.