The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson Penguin Press, 2008, 432 pp., $29.95 [contentblock id=20 img=gcb.png] Nestled in the acknowledgments at the end of Niall Ferguson’s new “financial history of the world” lies …
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North by Thomas J. Sugrue Random House, 2008, 688 pp., $35.00 [contentblock id=20 img=gcb.png] Sweet Land of Liberty is a survey of the northern civil rights movement. Thomas …
Barack Obama aspires to be a “transformative” president, with his hopes particularly fixed on America’s finally achieving a universal health care system. But would his health plan go far enough to transform a system that has been dominated and distorted …
For much of the twentieth century, Detroit was proudly known as the Motor City. Today, a drive up Woodward Avenue, its once bustling main street, takes you past abandoned buildings and debris-strewn lots. Landmarks of Detroit’s storied history, however, are …
Since 2004, accounts of how the Bush administration maneuvered the country into a war of choice in Iraq with the false claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction have quickly made it on to the best-seller list. It …
When Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton pledged to Ohio Democrats last spring to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, they were immediately charged by the mainstream press with pandering to labor, thus re-igniting the simplistic “free-trade vs. protectionism” debate …
The Archaeology of Collective Action by Dean J. Saitta University Press of Florida, 2007, 140 pp., $24.95 Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and the Class War in the American West by Scott Martelle Rutgers University Press, 2007, 217 pp., $25.95 …
Can an anti-war opera be reactionary? This question crossed my mind as I watched the recent production of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. “Reactionary” usually means backward-looking or backward—doing, but it implies more—a response to ideas …
Most Americans think the war in Iraq is over, or should be over, or will be over very soon. Whether we won or lost is less certain and has already become the subject of a debate that will grow more …
I recently had a conversation with a new acquaintance who works at a hedge fund. Excited by the opportunity to talk to someone on the “inside” of the crisis, I peppered him with questions, trying to avoid any particulars about …
In Snow, and in all his best writing, Pamuk creates a drama of modern life in the process of moving toward radical polarization.
Even a president intent on redemocratizing our state will find it to be hard work. The growing power of the executive is a deeper problem than the combination of national security threats and abuses of power can explain. It is …
Scholarly writing explains British withdrawal from India in terms of a crisis of the colonial state precipitated by Britain’s expansive involvement in the Second World War and the sustained anticolonial struggle of Indians led by leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi …
This is the first issue of Dissent published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Penn Press will be taking over the entire business end of the magazine—production, circulation, subscription fulfillment, advertising, permissions, and promotion. The new cover by the Penn …
Another America spoke up this past fall. Barack Obama’s victory over the Reagan Revolution’s latest surrogates opens new possibilities. It is a moment for hope, but not for messianic expectations. “Lead us into the Promised Land,” someone cried out a …
