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 The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
Philip K. Howard
Warner Books, March 1996
The New York Times' bestseller from CG founder and chair Philip K. Howard.
Summary:
Why did the New York City building code crush Mother Teresa's plans to build
a shelter for the homeless? Why do your tax dollars pay for policing elementary
school art displays? How did a handicap-access law deny public bathrooms for thousands
of able-bodied people? America is drowning: in law, legality, bureaucratic process.
Abandoning our common sense and individual sense of responsibility, we live in
terror of the law, in awe of procedure, at was with one another. Philip K. Howard
has written the explosive manifesto for liberation--one of the most talked about
sociopolitical treatises of our time. Citing dozens of examples of bureaucratic
overkill--everything from the labeling of window cleaner as a toxic substance
to the U.S. Department of Defense spending $2 billion on travel and $2.2 billion
processing the paperwork for that travel--The Death of Common Sense shows how
far we have wandered, how we got into this mess, and how we can--and must--get
out.
Selected Reviews
"Impressive...thoroughly researched...pointing to logical solutions...about what
works and doesn't work in the United States."
Los Angeles Daily News
"A brilliant diagnosis...forceful, trenchant, and eloquent."
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
"What Mr. Howard is trying to do with this thoughtful little book is drive us
all sane."
New York Times
"Mr. Howard's argument is fresh, reflecting an impressive combination of wisdom,
wry humor, and quiet passion. . . .When we think about 'reinventing government,'
it's a good place to start."
New York Times Book Review
"The delights of this policy prose poem lie in its perfect details, its civilized
tone, its sure sense of where the ill-made legal shoe pinches."
Wall Street Journal
"One of the most important, thought-provoking books I've read in years, and it
will grip you from the first page. Every doctor and teacher frustrated by paperwork,
every judge frustrated by mandatory sentencing guidelines, every banker and businessman
tied in regulatory knots, every manager terrified to fire someone for doing a
poor job--every taxpayer--will find The Death of Common Sense a blood-boiler.
What makes it important, thought, is not its (amazing) anecdotes, but that it
sp elegantly synthesizes them...and points to solutions."
Andrew Tobias
"Lucid, economical prose...its lessons are valid and needed therapy for our suffocating
democracy." Baltimore Sun Packed with splendid examples of absurd regulatory inflexibility."
Seattle Times "A wildly important book which should change the direction of public
debate in this country....Not often does a book appear that is startling and yet
so obviously correct....Philip Howard gives Americans their voice back. "
Andrew Heiskell, former publisher of Time, Inc.
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