In the years to follow, I hope we will dedicate ourselves as a nation to giving all our children the world-class education they need. There is no challenge more important. —President Bill Clinton, 2000 There is no greater test of …
Three years after India and Pakistan shocked the world with their nuclear tests, it is worth revisiting their arguments for nuclear weapons. Many in the West have already accepted those arguments and grown used to the idea that both countries …
Stand in Times Square at night, thrown every way by waves of light and people. It is easy to feel that you are in the belly of some great beast, and that the beast is being fed more and richer …
The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read by Andre Schiffrin Verso Books, 2000, 181 pp., $23 Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future by Jason Epstein Norton, 20001, 188 pp., $21.95 …
Looking at Labor on Film
Recently, after nine years of resolutely ignoring pleas, letters, e-mails, and the occasional phone call, I went to my first ever college alumni event. The reason was not a sudden burst of pride or the creeping nostalgia of age—rather it …
The Case of Filipina Domestic Workers in Hong Kong and Singapore
One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy by Thomas Frank Doubleday, 2000, 414 pp., $26.00 This is the story of a bizarre and, according to its narrator, victorious cultural counterrevolution. Thomas Frank calls …
The photographs of the foreign minister should not have surprised anyone. Indeed, most observers of German politics were still getting used to seeing him in three-piece suits when the pictures of Joschka Fischer lunging at a Frankfurt police officer during …
When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda by Mahmood Mamdani Princeton University Press, 2001, 364 pp., $29.95 Anyone sets out to show how genocide can become thinkable ought to have an eye on the line beyond …
As a loyal, if discontented, Dissent reader, I was only mildly surprised that you would print a pair of articles that are sullen and cautionary about a recent technological and cultural phenomenon called the Internet (“The Information Society, the New …
During the past two decades, the American media have often reported on the demise of the European welfare state. As the story goes, generous social welfare benefits, in conjunction with excessive labor market regulation, caused Europe’s unemployment woes. Having recognized …
Last fall, readers of Travel & Leisure magazine named the island of Maui the “World’s Best Island.” “Surprise, surprise,” sighed Condé Nast’s editors—this was the fourth year in a row Maui won the title. For the tourists who flock to …
Searching for America’s Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope by Peter Edelman Houghton Mifflin, 2001, 262 pp., $26 The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State by Michael B. Katz Metropolitan, 2001, 469 pp., $35 The London …
What is the proper place for the market? In the history of social and political thought, this seemingly simple question has elicited many different answers. That the answers vary so widely suggests that the question is not as simple as …
