Brand: Vanderbilt University Press Toward Wiser Public Judgment

Review Those interested in engaging in public life, and helping to create and sustain spaces in which community members might listen to, talk to, and learn from one another, have a great deal to learn from the stories collected within this volume.--Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement Product Description Revisits and expands upon Dan Yankelovichs seminal 1991 book, Coming to Public Judgment, which argued that people advance through several distinct stages to form politically meaningful judgments about public issues. This work examines these themes in light of changing societal conditions, from the advent of the Internet and the weakening of traditional media to the proliferation of urgent and complex problems that cannot be put off without courting disaster. From the Inside Flap Polls tell us almost nothing about how people make up their minds. About the Author Dan Yankelovich, Chairman and Co-Founder of Public Agenda, is the initiator of the New York Times/Yankelovich Poll and the author of twelve books. A founding president of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, he is also chairman emeritus of the Educational Testing Service. Yankelovich was Research Professor of Psychology at New York University and Professor of Psychology on the Graduate Faculty at the New School for Social Research. Will Friedman is President of Public Agenda, where he founded its public engagement department in 1997 and its Center for Advances in Public Engagement in 2007. The author of numerous articles on the theory and practice of public engagement, he was previously COO at Public Agenda and senior vice president for policy studies at the Work in America Institute.