"Are Americans a Broken People?" Levine, a practicing clinical psychologist and frequent writer on political matters, asked in a 2009 web article, meditating on the problem of American political passivity in the face of attacks on their liberties and their economic well-being. In this work, he expands on that article, exploring the cultural and psychological reasons many Americans feel politically demoralized and considering the means of regaining the individual self-respect and collective self-confidence that are prerequisites for building mass democratic politics (based on a populism transcending right/left divisions) that can overcome the current control of the American political system by elites. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)