Absolutely Fantastic Review Of I See Rude People
I was completely thrilled by the review of my book in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, by Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, of the London School of Economics, who also authors a refreshingly un-P.C. blog on Psychology Today. An excerpt, of the review he titled (making my day, week, month, year), "Applied Evolutionary Psychology at its Best":
I See Rude People is a seamless mixture of two types of stories. On the one hand, the book details her hilarious personal take on the rude, obnoxious, inconsiderate people who ruin the day for her and everyone else (people who have loud private conversations on cell phones in public places; parents who let their children run wild and cause nuisance to everyone around; telemarketers who call at all hours; liberal and progressive cyberbullies) and how she deals with such rude people in her everyday life. Then weaved with them are real-life detective stories in which Alkon tracks down individual criminals who victimized her (a thief who stole her car; a toothless black woman who stole her money via identity theft; an elderly driver who hit and damaged her car in a supermarket parking lot).Elmore Leonard, who provides a glowing endorsement of the book on the front cover, recommends the "Pink Rambler" chapter, in which Alkon tracks down a car thief who stole her 1960 Pink Nash Rambler (yes, she located one thief who stole her car out of 17 million people in the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area all by herself without any help from the police). But I personally like the Bank of America chapter better. I won't spoil the fun by revealing the details of Alkon's detective work, but here's the bottom line: do not bank with Bank of America! Your money, and your personal details, are not safe there.
Alkon uses Dunbar's (1993) "150 rule" and the Savanna Principle (Miller and Kanazawa, 2007) to explain the rampant rudeness in modern society. Humans have spent most of their evolutionary history in a small group of 150 or so genetically related individuals, where everybody knew everybody else in the group and spent their entire lives together. In such a group, because of the infinitely repeated social exchange, informal social control and "the shadow of the future" (Axelrod, 1984) sufficed to keep everyone in line within the group, whereas enemies outside of the group could be raided, exploited, raped or killed with impunity. We now live in large metropolises with millions of total strangers, but our brain still assumes that we live in the ancestral environment, where we are only accountable to informal social control of our genetic kin. Since few kin are around us these days, we feel unconstrained and behave badly. I think Alkon is on to something here.
I said it once (a few weeks ago) and I will say it again. I have never had a book send me into a fit of laughter like this one did. It was fuck*n brilliant. I just finished reading it again because the first time my eyes were so blurry from tears of laughter that I missed some things. Still just as good the second time.
Sabrina at January 25, 2010 5:23 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/01/25/great_review_of.html#comment-1690848">comment from SabrinaAww, thank you so much! I worked hard on this thing!
Amy Alkon
at January 25, 2010 5:59 AM
This theory does not explain why some societies are so nice. Thailand, Japan, many Europeans countries--people seem pleasant and not rude.
Sheesh, for that matter, in any Latin American
country people are warm and friendly.
BOTU at January 25, 2010 9:34 AM
> people seem pleasant and not rude.
There's more to hospitality (& liberty) than decorum on public transit.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at January 25, 2010 11:51 AM
*Brava*, Amy! You deserve the kudos!
DorianTB at January 25, 2010 12:54 PM
Congratulations!
You where wondering how to get your message about Bank of America out to a wider audience. You found a way!
(I still think the picture of you in the Elvira wig looks better on your blog)
Martin at January 25, 2010 2:37 PM
I just saw on FOX and Friends this morning, where they were going on about how having lots of Facebook friends could lead to a sort of overload, since we were designed, through God's sublime process of evolution (my words, not theirs), to have no more than 150 friends. (There's that number again!).
mpetrie98 at January 25, 2010 6:19 PM
Kudos! Sell lots o books!
Whatever at January 25, 2010 9:44 PM
Congrats, Amy! Boy, you can coast now for quite a while on that endorsement!
'Cept I know you won't.
Karen at January 26, 2010 7:20 PM
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