Like many others, my response to reports of hundreds of thousands of mostly black people stranded in a flood was shock and outrage. My anger grew as I learned of the horrific conditions many of these people endured for days …
When Barrington Moore, Jr., died October 16 at age ninety-two, I remembered the mandatory meetings for coffee he scheduled with students at the place he called “the greasy spoon down the block” in Harvard Square. At the time—1966 and 1967—I …
Khans, kings, and conquerors—these are the leaders Afghans have mostly known. The legacies of Alexander the Macedonian, Genghis Khan, the Soviet Army, the Mujahadin, and finally the Taliban and Osama bin Laden share one feature: leadership based on power and …
“The man who first flung a word of abuse at an enemy instead of a spear was the founder of civilization.” Sigmund Freud once quoted this adage with approval, and its (apocryphal) point is plain enough. But its insufficiency as …
Seventeen years ago, in a devastating song, Lou Reed portrayed Forty-Second Street and Times Square as the “Dirty Boulevard.” Looking at this same place today, we would have to call it “the cleaned-up boulevard.” What can we say about life …
After World War I, a French general was asked how one fights the Germans. “Retreat and retreat,” was the reply, “and wait for the German mistake.” So it has pretty much been with the Democratic Party generals after the watershed …
China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy by Peter Hays Gries
Recent political developments in Europe and America present two apparent paradoxes. First, much of what remains of the radical left has aligned itself with extreme Islamic political movements that promote the establishment of religious regimes in Asia and Africa, with …
Getting ready for the Olympic Games in Turin
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch
Barbara Bergmann makes a good case for the priority of certain “merit goods” over cash grants—a position I think most basic income supporters would agree with—but her argument breaks down when she attempts to prove, through the example of Sweden, …
Over the past five years, four successful revolutions have occurred in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, overthrowing pseudodemocratic regimes and bringing to power new coalitions expressing commitment to democratic reform. There is now enormous interest in revolution among democratic activists …
T. R. Reid’s The United States of Europe, Jeremy Rifkin’s The European Dream, and Mark Leonard’s Why Europe will Run the 21st Century
The incompetence and cruelty of the Bush administration, currently on view in Iraq and New Orleans, may suffice to get the electorate to reduce Republican ascendancy in the Congress in 2006 and put a Democrat in the White House in …
Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson’s Off Center
