Reviewed by Lisa Gresham
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
As the former president of the progressive think tank, Demos, Heather McGhee spent 20 years looking for solutions to economic inequality and other big social problems before realizing she was hitting the same wall. That wall came to be defined by the question, “In America, why can’t we just have nice things?” such as reliable and modern infrastructure, universal healthcare, or well-funded, state-of-the-art schools—all social components that seem like they would be no-brainers in the wealthiest nation in the world.
Her new book,
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, grew from this question and the realization that lasting change was more likely to come from shifts in public opinion rather than policy alone, embarking McGhee (pictured) on a personal journey into the hearts of Americans to reveal the falsehoods of the zero-sum game that has limited our collective vision of what we can be to one defined by scarcity.