[Michael Kinsley] on David Brooks' new book [On Paradise Drive] ISBN:0743227387 - He starts by slicing and dicing the American population into categories and subcategories, each with its own values and habits and sartorial preferences. Then he turns around and puts us all back together again, reinterpreting his previous examples of our differences as evidence of our essential similarity. It's a bravura performance and always entertaining, if not always convincing. The Brooks sociological method has four components: fearless generalizing, clever coinage, jokes and shopping lists... At the very least, Brooks does not let the sociology get in the way of the shtick, and he wields a mean shoehorn when he needs the theory to fit the joke.

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