Structure

Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect US and What We Can Do is a nonfiction book by social psychologist and psychology professor emeritus Claude Steele. It is by Steele’s own admission a book he was somewhat reluctant to write, because prior to this, he had only ever written academic articles. Whistling Vivaldi, however, is meant to be a book for the general public, or at least the college-educated public. Steele writes in narrative prose, rather than academic text, but uses fairly advanced vocabulary. He uses a mix of anecdote and scientific data, sometimes combining the two to describe how he came up with the idea for an experiment, to provide examples of people who have faced and/or overcome challenges due real and perceived prejudice. Whistling Vivaldi is divided into eleven chapters, which are each, in turn, divided into anywhere from two to seven subsections. The chapters...