The slow pace of argument in quarterly magazines, the lag between the latest political news and our commentary on it, is sometimes a disadvantage, but not always. This spring it protects us against the sin of early disillusionment. President Barack …
Early in 2008—before the economy started acting up—the New York Times published a special issue of its Sunday magazine—the Money Issue, though it might equally well have been called the “Good” Issue. Its cover package touted various strategies for transforming …
Sheri Berman has written an exhortation to the “present day” democratic socialist Left in the “Western world” to get over “the loss of its vision of a postcapitalist society,” to stop denigrating efforts to reform capitalism, and to begin agitating …
Let me begin by thanking Joanne Barkan for her thoughtful comments. On many points we agree, but on several big ones we do not—about the distinctiveness of the social democratic tradition, its superiority to other traditions on the democratic Left, …
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama and John McCain were invited to Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church for back-to-back conversations about where they stood on issues important to Warren and his conservative evangelical congregation. “Pastor Rick,” as Obama addressed him, asked …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
