Join the Club, by Tina Rosenberg, W.W. Norton and Company, 351 pages (plus bibliography and notes), 2011.
Join the Club, by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tina Rosenberg, is the latest in the currently vogue genre of Pop Social-Psychology/Pop Sociology. The genre, for which Rosenberg’s fellow New York Times writer Malcom Gladwell is probably the best-known populizer, typically takes a rather academic topic for which there has been recent research that either contradicts the conventional wisdom, or is profound in its societal implications. The best works, such as Sunstein and Thaler’s Nudge or Gladwell’s Tipping Point, do both. The journalist-author then acts as a medium, distilling the social science for the general audience, as well as forging an engaging story that can hold that audience’s attention. Join the Club is Rosenberg’s first full foray into the genre and is highly recommended to anybody concerned with human behavior. Though the book ultimately suffers from poor organization and the examples have all been presented with greater analytical rigor elsewhere, Rosenberg nevertheless synthesizes these stories in a new and fascinating way.
