What Americans Really Want...Really: The Truth about Our Hopes, Dreams, and Fears by Frank I. Luntz

From the Publisher

No one in America has done more observing of more people than Dr. Frank I. Luntz. From Bill O'Reilly to Bill Maher, America's leading pundits, prognosticators, and CEOs turn to Luntz to explain the present and to predict the future. With all the upheavals of recent events, the plans and priorities of the American people have undergone a seismic shift. Businesses everywhere are trying to market products and services during this turbulent time, but only one man really understands the needs and desires of the New America.

From restaurant booths to voting booths, Luntz has watched and assessed our private habits, our public interests, and our hopes and fears. What are the five things Americans want the most? What do they really want in their daily lives? In their jobs? From their government? For their families? And how does understanding what Americans want allow businesses to thrive? Luntz disassembles the preconceived notions we have about one another and lays all the pieces of the American condition out in front of us, openly and honestly, then puts the pieces back together in a way that reflects the society in which we live. What Americans Really Want...Really is a real, if sometimes scary, discussion of Americans' secret hopes, fears, wants, and needs.

The research in this book represents a decade of face-to-face interviews with twenty-five thousand people and telephone polls with one million more, as well as the exclusive, first-ever "What Americans Really Want" survey. What Luntz offers is a glimpse into the American psyche, along with analysis that will rock assumptions and right business judgment. He proves that success in virtually any profession demands thatwe either understand what Americans really want, or suffer the consequences.

Publishers Weekly

Luntz (Words That Work) draws on personal experiences and current focus group research to aggregate our understanding of attitudes about everyday life, work, consumption, corporations, religious institutions, government, family relationships and community membership. Ostensibly for a general readership, the real audience for Luntz's work are groups who benefit from knowing what drives choices in contemporary American culture. Market researchers, pollsters, lobbyists and public relations officials are offered insights into such topics as what college students care about, what people expect from their employers and government, and what religious beliefs count in “selling” God to congregants. Using anecdotal stories about interviewing Playboy bunnies and “secret shopping” as well as boxed summaries about “Words that Work,” Luntz is shaping opinion and marketing campaigns rather than offering a synthetic vision of the American population. The questions asked offer respondents a limited perspective from which to construct their answers, resulting in hopes, dreams and fears that reflect the worldview of Luntz's corporate and political clients more than the so-called “average American” whose words he purports to present. (Sept.)

What People Are Saying

Newt Gingrich
"Frank Luntz understands the American people better than anyone I know."--(Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House)

Thomas J. Donohue
"America's top companies listen to Frank Luntz because he understands what customers want and what employees think. He has a keen sense of the American psyche and an outstanding command of language that empowers and persuades."--(Thomas J. Donohue, President & CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce)

President Barack Obama
"When Frank Luntz invites you to talk to his focus group, you talk to his focus group."--(President Barack Obama, spoken on June 28, 2007, to a PBS-sponsored focus group following the Democratic presidential debate at Howard University)

Sir David Frost
"The Nostradamus of pollsters."

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