Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars

by Meghan Daum

Overview

From “one of the most emotionally exacting, mercilessly candid, deeply funny, and intellectually rigorous writers of our time” (Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild) comes a seminal new book that reaches surprising truths about feminism, the Trump era, and the Resistance movement. You won’t be able to stop thinking about it and talking about it.

In the fall of 2016, acclaimed author Meghan Daum began working on a book about the excesses of contemporary feminism. With Hillary Clinton soon to be elected, she figured even the most fiercely liberal of her friends and readers could take the criticisms in stride. But after the election, she knew she needed to do more, and her nearly completed manuscript went in the trash. What came out in its place is the most sharply-observed, all-encompassing, and unputdownable book of her career.

In this gripping new work, Meghan examines our country’s most intractable problems with clear-eyed honesty instead of exaggerated outrage. With passion, humor, and most importantly nuance, she tries to make sense of the current landscape—from Donald Trump’s presidency to the #MeToo movement and beyond. In the process, she wades into the waters of identity politics and intersectionality, thinks deeply about the gender wage gap, and tests a theory about the divide between Gen Xers and millennials.

This signature work may well be the first book to capture the essence of this era in all its nuances and contradictions. No matter where you stand on its issues, this book will strike a chord.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781508298557
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication date:	10/22/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 5.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Meghan Daum is the author of five books and writes a biweekly column about culture and politics for Medium. Her most recent book is The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion, which won the 2015 PEN Center USA Award for creative nonfiction. Her other books include the essay collection My Misspent Youth, and she edited the New York Times bestseller Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids. From 2005 to 2016, Daum was an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times. She has contributed to numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and Vogue. A recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, she is on the adjunct faculty in the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University School of the Arts.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Introduction xxi

Chapter 1 The Problem with Being a Woman 1

Chapter 2 The Problem with Being a Girl 29

Chapter 3 The Problem with Work 63

Chapter 4 The Problem with Being Tough 91

Chapter 5 The Problem with College 117

Chapter 6 The Problem with Free Speech 155

Chapter 7 The Problem with Humor 197

Chapter 8 The Problem with The Problem 213

Acknowledgments 221

Editorial Reviews

08/26/2019

As a self-identified liberal with a “penchant for devil’s advocacy,” essayist Daum (The Unspeakable) explores hypocrisy and lack of nuance from the Left in this edgy polemic. She takes aim at the undeveloped, hamfisted modes of expression on social media; recalls arguing with friends who believe “the world sucks for women”; dismisses the concept of toxic masculinity because some women also engage in toxic behavior; argues that the Title IX regulation meant to protect sexual assault victims on college campuses fails to account sufficiently for false accusations; and recounts becoming fascinated with “free speech” personalities such as Christina Hoff Sommers and Jordan Peterson. She is most nuanced and perceptive when looking at the personal; for example, she draws an astute connection between this growing interest and the end of her marriage, and acknowledges that her opinions are informed by “aging and feeling obsolete.” But the book is largely more cultural in focus. In one characteristic moment, she asks, “Are we only allowed to punch up? And if so, does that mean those of us perceived to be on the highest rungs are left just waving our fists in the air, with nothing to punch? Maybe. But I still feel like punching something a lot of the time.” Fans of Daum’s searching, incisive essays and memoirs will likely be put off; fans of her opinion columns and fellow contrarians may be more receptive. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

One of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2019

One of The New York Post’s Best Books of 2019

“Electrifying.”
- The New York Times

“... affectingly personal, achingly earnest, and something close to necessary.”
– Vogue.com

“an elegantly-composed treatise against tribalism and cancel culture that seamlessly weaves in personal anecdotes.”
– Elle

“Personal, convincing, unflinching.”
- Tablet

“Daum's writing is brave and engaging; she does some hard thinking about our times and demands that we do too.”
– Newsweek

“A book of thoughtful, provocative essays on everything from the Trump presidency to identity politics to generational differences and beyond. At a time when nuance of any kind is often dismissed, Daum offers thoughtful takes on hot-button topics.”
– The New York Post

“This book is the eloquent testament of a card-carrying feminist who abhors the stranglehold that political correctness has placed on intellectual life in America. As such, it is to be applauded—and I do.”
—Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments and The Odd Woman and the City

"The Problem with Everything has the brutal honesty and rawness that will leave you examining your own thoughts and beliefs about the culture we are living in today. It forces you to ask yourself the question: whose side am I really on, and why do I have to choose one? I love how this book pushes me to think harder and be smarter."
—Chelsea Handler, author of Life Will Be the Death of Me . . . and You too!

"For those who are outraged by the current political moment and yet are feeling weary from the outrage, for the Gen-Xers who got lost between generations, or really anyone feeling a little more lost than everyone they follow on Twitter, let Meghan Daum be your spiritual guide! She'll show you that it's possible to be alive in this political moment but in your own way."
—Hanna Rosin, host of NPR’s Invisibilia podcast

"Meghan Daum's observations will stand in the future as a perfect encapsulation of how social media has transformed educated people's sense of what it is to be moral in the 2010s. More to the point, this book shines a light on us right now, a brighter and more revealing one than anything on the Twittersphere."
—John McWhorter, author of Words on the Move and The Language Hoax

“Just when you thought feminist iconoclasm had gone into retreat or extinction, The Problem With Everything arrives, slicing through the intellectual murk of outrage culture and edgy online wokeness. Daum is a virtuoso at rueful insights and self-interrogation, willing to risk upending things in the knowledge that ‘safe spaces’ and safe ideas advance none of us.”
—Laura Kipnis, author of Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus

“Meghan Daum has a world-class BS detector. In elegant, incisive, often hilarious prose, she calmly applies it to the confusion and narcissism threatening so many of our most feverish, social media-driven debates. From the shifting terms of “fourth-wave” feminism to the paradoxes of privilege and the myopia of tribalism, The Problem with Everything probes a liberalism under assault from all fronts and in danger of falling apart from within. Nothing escapes Daum’s scrutiny—least of all herself.”
—Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Self-Portrait In Black And White: Unlearning Race

“Showcasing both her sense of humor and her sense of outrage, Meghan Daum’s The Problem with Everything will make you laugh and it will make you think. In these polarized times, her call for nuance feels brave, and sorely necessary. Daum strides into that most challenging, confusing of places – the grey area – and forces us to confront and unpack its layers.”
—A.M. Homes, author of Days of Awe

“Sharp, brazen, and undeniably controversial.”
– Kirkus

”Daum, an old-school essayist more in the vein of Joan Didion and Nora Ephron than xoJane and Jezebel, says she will continue to tease out the nuances that exist all around us, even as doing so becomes increasingly... problematic.”
– The Stranger

From the Publisher

Author/narrator Meghan Daum grapples with big questions in this brief exploration of contemporary American feminism and the increasing trend of public shaming amid social media culture. She is direct and firm in her contemplation of the competing forces that come together in the culture wars. In doing so, Daum establishes an intimate tone somewhere between university lecture and angst-ridden rant. The result is the feeling that we are having coffee with a smart friend who has interesting views. Listeners who are trying to make sense of current political and social events in the U.S. will find themselves nodding along. Delivered at a swift pace, these eight chapters speed by, leaving the listener with much to consider. M.R. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2020 - AudioFile

Author/narrator Meghan Daum grapples with big questions in this brief exploration of contemporary American feminism and the increasing trend of public shaming amid social media culture. She is direct and firm in her contemplation of the competing forces that come together in the culture wars. In doing so, Daum establishes an intimate tone somewhere between university lecture and angst-ridden rant. The result is the feeling that we are having coffee with a smart friend who has interesting views. Listeners who are trying to make sense of current political and social events in the U.S. will find themselves nodding along. Delivered at a swift pace, these eight chapters speed by, leaving the listener with much to consider. M.R. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2020 - AudioFile

2019-07-15
A sweeping critique of the "wokescenti."

Award-winning essayist, memoirist, and novelist Daum (The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion, 2014, etc.), recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, takes on fourth-wave feminism, victimhood, identity politics, #MeToo, social media, ideological warfare on college campuses, and assorted other irritants in a culture that is "effectively mentally ill." Social media, asserts the author, creates an echo chamber where people lie to one another and eagerly wait for friends to lie back. "I am convinced," she writes, "the culture is effectively being held hostage by its own hyperbole. So enthralled with our outrage at the extremes, we've forgotten that most of the world exists in the mostly unobjectionable middle." Examining displays of outrage as public performance, she writes that "the search for grievance has become a kind of political obligation, an activist gesture." Accusations of sexism, sexual harassment, or assault, she believes, foster women's image of themselves as victims rather than individuals "capable of making mistakes"; in making such accusations, women "literally hand men their own power." Rather than see the gender wage gap as evidence of sexism, Daum suggests "that there are biological differences between male and female brains that can influence women's professional decisions." She also criticizes "the left-leaning chatterati" who praised Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me as engaging in "self-congratulatory reverence," wondering "if my white friends and colleagues who venerated Coates actually liked his work or just liked the idea of liking it." This suspicion of other people's authenticity underlies much of the book: Daum admits that when she was an undergraduate in the midst of student uprisings, she "often felt like I was impersonating a college student…I had a hard time believing other people were actually for real." Now middle-aged, divorced, childless by choice, and feeling increasingly marginal, the author is dismayed by those whose energetic engagement with social and cultural problems fuels "the exquisite lie of our own relevance."

Sharp, brazen, and undeniably controversial.

Kirkus Reviews