LAUSR

Hope includes interview data from editorial page editors. Most (88.1%) letters get published. Those that are rejected lose out for predictable reasons: they are too long, libelous, filled with obscenity, or hard to follow (pp. 129–30). Editors admitted that letters come from “regulars,” meaning those who wrote all the time; “angry” commentators, those who had a bone to pick; and “people who are not happy with their government” (pp. 130–31). These are predictable, time-tested roles of such letters. Michael Schudson, among others, used missives to the Boston Gazette to help tell the story of how the notion of a “good” citizen in the United States came to be defined (The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life, 1998, p. 28). However, the interviews with the editors about letter writers suggest there is something special—not ordinary— about those who write. Although they may live in places that make less news, they are not average Janes and Joes. They take their citizenship more seriously than other people, and they feel upset that others are not so inclined. Although there is plenty of granular and interview data in the book for readers to like, Hart also uses a big data approach to bring the voices of letter writers to readers. Using a software he developed, Hart analyzes and maps the sound and word choices of letter writers, as opposed to politicians and journalists. Hart hypothesizes that letter writers might act as a harmonizer of sorts and find the middle ground between presidents (who are too optimistic) and journalists (who tend to be dour). “Writers weigh the good and the bad,” he explains, like “referees in a tugof-war” (p. 147). This refereeing sometimes sounds like sermonizing, and sometimes it is more like fortune telling. The sermonizing, of course, can be irksome. Indeed, part of the pleasure of reading letters to the editor comes from the irritation they generate. Reading another’s “bad” opinion produces a sense of superiority in readers, Hart writes. But even this egoism comes with a benefit: letters to the editor work as a kind of “gentle spring rain” (p. 178) against the frenetic online process of networked news and social media commentary. Here, Hart may overestimate the power of letters to overcome internet chatter. He deplores the nature of online commentary and argues that the steps required in writing, addressing, mailing, editing, and then printing letters adds a deliberative solemnity to the process that cannot be ignored. What is less certain is how much longer readers will look for these letters or see them as different from the online comments Hart finds so distasteful. As a whole, the book is a vital contribution to literatures in voter apathy and voter behavior in political communication and political science. If there is a true weakness in the book it is its strictly American focus. Except for a few mentions of international journalists, there is little of interest for scholars outside the United States. Even so, Civic Hope is an outstanding work of empirical scholarship that deserves a place on every bookshelf.