Thursday on the Midday show at 1:

Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort (Houghton Mifflin, May 2008)

In 1992, about 37 percent of American voters lived in landslide counties – that is, counties where one political party won elections by 20 percent or more. By the year 2000, the number of Americans in landslide counties had risen to 45 percent, and the polarization continues to grow. America has become a series of population clusters, with many of us having as neighbors people who live, think and vote as we do. More than ever in the history of the nation, the once-Great Melting Pot has become segregated into a series of homogeneous communities where Americans are surrounded by the like-minded. Bill Bishop, calls it The Big Sort, and he says the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart.