<blockquote>If the great experiment is to be truly successful, it must offer a realistic account of human nature and be honest about the injustices of the past. But it must also be unapologetically sanguine about the possibility that members of different groups can pull together to build fair and thriving democracies whose members share a sense of common purpose.</blockquote>

<i>The Great Experiment</i> by Yascha Mounk is a brief argument (see above quote) for maintaining and strengthening the system of liberal democracy in increasingly diverse (in ethnic, religious, and ideological dimensions) Western countries, especially the United States. Mounk's book has a tripartite structure. First, he describes the challenges that face diverse societies then responds to the questions that these challenges provoke. Finally, he concludes with some reasons for optimism and policy prescriptions. Mounk's writing is accessible though maybe overly simplistic. Nonetheless, he succinctly provides a traditional center-left position on liberal governance with some idiosyncratic heterodoxies mixed in. These philosophical divergences include Mounk's foundational view of human nature, which is admittedly Hobbesian, his acknowledgement of the stickiness of identitarian/tribal psychology, and his rejection of the "demography is destiny" hypothesis. These idiosyncrasies make the work more interesting because for any reader versed in college-level political philosophy the work will largely feel like well-organized normie platitudes.

Mounk's work fits neatly at the replacement-level into the ongoing public discourse concerning the status and fate of liberalism in diverse societies. It is an incredibly competitive publishing space with many provocative and erudite options: <i>Bowling Alone</i> by Robert Putnam, <i>Coming Apart</i> by Charles Murray, <i>Why Liberalism Failed</i> by Patrick Deneen, <i>Why Liberalism Works</i> by Deidre McCloskey, <i>Suicide of the West</i> by Jonah Goldberg, <i>The Narrow Corridor</i> by Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson, <i>Liberalism and Its Discontents</i> by Francis Fukuyama, etc. Relative to the works just listed, this book benefits from being designed for a broader (more popular) audience. Don't let the long bibliography and notes section convince you otherwise. Generally, these notes do also serve as a satisfactory reference for digging deeper into the issues Mounk raises, which I would recommend.

Despite the clarity and accessibility, <i>The Great Experiment</i> suffers a bit from an uneven tone and unnecessary personal color passages that add little to the overall work. This detracts from the gravity of work and makes some of the claims seem irresolute, ambivalent, or thoughtlessly optimistic. This with the fact that much of the work contains predictably center-left liberal arguments or recycles the works of others, underscores that this book could probably be boiled down to a pamphlet-type essay (though obviously economic and attention incentives compel book length works). Clones of Mounk's perspective are easy to access across numerous platforms, including his own, Persuasion.

There are of course some silly policy prescriptions in the book (again, sort of made off-the-cuff near the end) and other things I have political, philosophical, or descriptive quibbles with but these aren't things that shouldn't get in the way of reading it. <i>The Great Experiment</i> makes for a decent read for a high school or college level student with little prior background in political philosophy but still has general civic interests.