I was really looking forward to this book since I've really been feeling the same thing as the title: that America is currently full of victims due to extreme identity politics. I just did not like the way the author wrote. It came off arrogant while also trying to justify that he wasn't arrogant because he was an expert so how could he possibly be arrogant, right? Wrong. It was annoying to read.

There were several really great points made but it was overshadowed by an extra hundred pages that didn't need to be there because it was extreme fluff. This could've been a blog series. It took me so long to read this and I just wanted to stop multiple times.

I received this ARC from NetGalley and Hatchette Book Group: Center Street in exchange for an honest review.

This is an amazing book. I read Vivek's first book a few months ago and loved it. I was excited when this new one became available. I can say without hesitation, it's even better than "Woke, Inc."

In fact, it's so good I've already ordered two for friends.

"Nation of Victims" is a college course in History, Political Science, and Sociology packed into a couple hundred pages. Ramaswamy's arguments aren't always what you want to hear, but they are rock solid. The author is conservative and Hindu and well educated, but he is logical and passionate. This book is hard to label because it is so many things. The one thing you need to know is it's beautifully written.

Buy this book!!!

Vivek Ramaswamy follows up his book Woke Inc. with a solid argument about the peril of living in a nation of victims. The theme of the book traces how a culture of victimhood coupled with a lazy populace spells doom for America. He displays that it has become common for both the left and the right to frame themselves as victims in order to position themselves as oppressed. A woke culture that has endorsed the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, sees a victim as oppressed and therefore more truthful. The author makes interesting parallels between his native Hinduism and Christianity. He argues that Christianity solves the problem of victimhood namely because every individual is a victim of sin. Christianity also offers forgiveness which America desperately needs. Although, this work was not exactly what I anticipated I appreciate the analysis and would recommend the book.

I have recently taken a liking to non-fiction reads and this one really taught me a lot. I didn’t realize how interesting this topic was until I finished reading and had to sit with what I had just learned. I definitely would read more from this author.

Stacey Abrams == Donald Trump. And The Way Back Is To Ignore Both. Ok, so the title here was a bit intentionally inflammatory - but Ramaswamy *does* essentially make this very point late in the book, pointing to how both Abrams and Trump see themselves as victims of election fraud rather than candidates who lost elections because more voters legitimately sided with their opponents. But to get there, and to get from there to how we can truly come back, Ramaswamy dives through American history, legal theory, and even his Hindu religion to show how both progressives and conservatives have largely adopted a victimhood mentality. Interestingly, he never once cites Ayn Rand's examinations of this same idea in Atlas Shrugged. Overall an interesting book worthy of consideration, and with a fairly normal bibliography at about 21% of the overall text here. Very much recommended.

Reading Vivek Rama Swamy’s Nation Of Victims is a bit like taking an upper level course on Modern Society, tackling everything from philosophy to sociology to economics on the way. He poses the question of whether we are a dying nation akin to the fall of the Roman Empire or whether we can experience a rebirth. A large part of the demise of America, he argues, rests in the rise of victimhood over meritocracy.

Ramaswamy begins with the underdog story, the Horatio Alger story of lifting one’s self up by one’s bootstraps. Being an underdog, he explains, is not about how much you win, but about how hard you are willing to work for it. Underdogs always see themselves that way. They are always the outsiders, not the incumbents. Compare that he says to a victim’s story where a victim demands of those around them, not of themselves. The problem for us as a nation now, he explains, is that we are a wealthy nation and easy times create weak men such that we are more worried about what words we use rather than on having enough to eat.

The next part of the book delves into history, the story of the Civil War and General Longstreet. But from history, we then leap into the philosophy of Hume and Kant.

As to history, Ramaswamy is a bit uncomfortable with the business of tearing down statues. History, he reminds us, is filled with nuanced men and women who struggled to do the right thing even if they often failed. Dividing the nation into black and white, virtuous victims and evil oppressors, without shades of grey, we will blind ourselves to our past.

After discussing history and philosophy, Ramaswamy turns to a discussion of constitutional jurisprudence, decrying the failure of the High Court to invigorate the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which could have illuminated rights and duties of citizens. The Court instead went down the long rabbit hole of substantive due process and dividing people into groups deserving different levels of protection.

Next, the book tackles Critical Race Theory, explaining its intellectual history and critiquing the main expository texts of that doctrine. Personal anecdotes illuminate the explanations.

After tracing victimhood through history, philosophy, judicial decisions, and intellectual theory, Ramaswamy argues that victimhood has been seized on by both the Left and The Right, using examples of two politicians who refused to concede election losses, Stacey Abrams and Donald Trump.

Victimhood and viewing your own nation as being in the downswing is not becoming. The next chapter is devoted to the fall of Empire and a history lesson in Rome and Carthage.

Eventually we come full circle to his prescription that we view America not as a dying nation, but one searching for itself and waiting to be reborn. Just shed these arguments and grievances of victimhood we are told