The Coddling of the American Mind

The authors use several outlying anecdotes as if those represent what is happening on all college campuses. They lack data for the first half of the book, purely anecdotes. And even when they do use data in the second half or so, they often say things like “maybe” and “probably” when stating causality.

They pretty much only talk about problems on the left even though they claim the problems are on both sides. There is one chapter where they discuss extremism on the right, but it is only a small portion of the overall book.

The solutions they posit are almost all reasonable, but there is no proof that they will actually solve the “problems” they identify.

It is also clear that they don't fully understand some of the things they discuss like microaggresions and anti-racism because they make many misleading or completely untrue statements.

Finally the authors decry both fragility and catastrophizing when they do those things many times throughout the book. They come across as fragile white men who don't want anything to change. They also constantly talk about all the possible worst case scenarios about what might happen if the things continue the way they see it going.

Overall it is written in a way that is easy to read, but their logic and data are too weak and obviously biased to make the book any good.