Clueless at the Top: While the Rest of Us Turn Elsewhere for Life, Liberty, and Happiness

Rating:
Summary: Examining Hierarchies
Review: Clueless at the Top is an amazing book. It examines a complex subject using the deceptively simple and very accessible means of anecdotal tales that remind me of parables.

The idea of the book is that our society is made up of many hierarchies. You might simultaneously be at the top of one hierarchy and the bottom of another. For example, if you are a white woman and a single parent who has a job as an executive in a Fortune 500 company, you are at the top of the race hierarchy, the bottom of the gender and marriage hierarchies, and the top of the employment hierarchy.

But the book doesn't simply suggest that you find out which hierarchies you are a part of. It analyzes our country, historically and in the present, and the effects of the hierarchical system on all of us. We lose power when we participate in the hierarchies. The Childress sisters urge us to dismantle the hierarchies and create a true democracy where everyone is equal and everyone has equal access to life, liberty, and happiness.