Being America by Jedediah Purdy asks the reader to take a good look at some of the most important issues that our generation will have to deal with. Most of these issues have not risen since the days of Rome. Purdy presents his arguments in a way that I feel was not very effective. I found his writing technique to be not only boring but often repetitive and unnecessary. I agree with most of Purdy's ideas, although there are many times where his ideas were actually the ideas of previous intellects. I feel that Purdy left out some recent controversies such as outsourcing.
             Purdy is obviously a well educated man having attended both Yale and Harvard so my initial reaction was to trust every word he told me. I was not able to catch any mistakes, but after reading an essay titled Reaction to Jedediah Purdy's Being America by David E. Powell I found out otherwise. He found instances where information was not only undocumented, but sometimes unable to document. He always found places where information was just flat out wrong. Even though I do not have enough knowledge about these issues to find an error, Powell's findings make me wonder how valid Purdy's book is. Purdy's language barrier also hurt this book. I feel that if he were able to talk to more of a variety of people instead of just the well educated ones who spoke English he would have gotten better results.
             Another reason why I feel Purdy was not effective in his writing was the purpose of his book was never really fully developed or clear. This was due to the fact that his issues were too broad. He skips around from Osama bin Laden to the history of AIDS to sweatshops and so on. In the beginning of the book I though it was going to be about how other countries feel towards the United States, but by the end my head was so packed with a variety of information and opinions that I really wasn't sure what to think. I wish he had f...