Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber Melville House, 2011, 554 pp. As recently as a year ago, the anthropologist David Graeber was well respected within his academic discipline but little-known outside of it. His sole brush with public …
Some people work in restaurants as a lifestyle choice: they love the fast pace, the quick jokes, the often easy-flowing booze. At the height of a busy shift, if everything’s going right, a team of skilled cooks and waiters can …
Alinsky’s Ghost Editors: Nelson Lichtenstein’s otherwise excellent review of Frank Bardacke’s otherwise extraordinary book on Cesar Chavez and the farm workers union (Winter 2012) repeats Bardacke’s misreading of Saul Alinsky’s ideas about organizers and leaders and the relationship of each …
On September 24, 2011, Michael Kazin published an important essay in the New York Times, “Whatever Happened to the American Left?” In it he examined the “populist left’s” historic role in shaping politics and policy discussions in the United States, …
Progressives have forgotten how to think about the constitutional dimensions of economic life. Work, livelihood, and opportunity; material security and insecurity; poverty and dependency; union organizing, collective bargaining, and workplace democracy: for generations of American reformers, the constitutional importance of …
In January 2010, I met a Bulgarian friend for dinner in a Georgetown pizza parlor. This friend, whom I will call Svetozara, had recently immigrated to the United States and was looking for a job in D.C. Recently divorced after …
However the French presidential elections turn out in the coming weeks, the campaign has produced one memorable moment—when François Hollande, the Socialist candidate, delivered a sharp critique of the austerity measures imposed on Greece by the European Union and the …
The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India by Siddhartha Deb Faber and Faber, 2011, 272 pp. In referring to his book as “a portrait of the New India,” Siddhartha Deb has opted to engage in a …
Even if you weren’t aware of the rising intensity of debates over food politics in recent years, the face-off between Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama probably caught your attention. One of Michelle Obama’s most high profile acts as First Lady …
The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics by Thomas Byrne Edsall Doubleday, 2012, 272 pp. Arizona has sold its state capitol. Government budgets are contracting, especially when it comes to services and goods essential for the poor. …
The 1950s: The food is salty, starchy, soothing. Milk arrives in glass bottles; eggs are delivered by a farmer. We can our own tomatoes and fruit. Frozen food is too expensive. I feed sugar cubes to the junkman’s horse. The …
In Henry James’s short story “The Middle Years,” an ailing writer is troubled by the conviction that only now, after many books, has he begun to find his true voice. All the work he’s done so far has been nothing …
This essay puts forward the basic premises around which the Occupy movements in the United States are organized, locates the movement globally, argues that the movements themselves are the ones that should determine their own success, and then distinguishes these …
I was seventeen and taking an elective course in Earth and Environmental Science. We were learning about farming and the food system—genetic modification, land use, organic labeling—when our teacher assigned us an article about beef. The article explained the following …
Michael Kazin’s bracing intervention asks us to consider why, despite circumstances of rising inequality and ample sources of discontent, it is the Right, not the Left, that has more effectively mobilized populist instincts and possibilities. His thoughtful historical answer is …
