Who are the nonvoters? Although they can be found in every stratum of society, there is no doubt they are disproportionately poor, less educated, black, and Hispanic—generally viewed as liberal and Democratic-leaning groups. Moreover, this bias, at least in terms …
When Americans tune inward, what do they hear in “globalizing” times? All too often that “the market” is the solution—whatever the trouble. It’s reminiscent of bad Marxism. Remember the advanced theorists who insisted: nationalize the means of production, all problems …
The Blair-Schroeder third-way manifesto published in the Spring issue (“The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte, annotated by Joanne Barkan) is not a pretty document. But it does not deserve the graffiti that Joanne Barkan splattered all over it. Or rather it …
Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II by Joshua B. Freeman The New Press, 2000, 393 pp., $35 I’m sitting here in sunny California poring over short-term rentals in downtown Manhattan. My wife stops short at a …
Hector Cuatepotzo, a waiter at the upscale Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, California, and an active member of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) union, lives in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with his wife, Maria, six-year-old daughter, Ashley, and …
Near the beginning of A. S. Byatt’s novel Possession: A Romance, an obscure, despondent literary scholar, Roland Mitchell, has a thought that will preoccupy him throughout the remainder of the book. It will inspire his subsequent growth as an intellectual …
In my home state of Kentucky, basketball is our religion. We all know it and we all agree upon it, at least implicitly. Our catechism begins, “Fight, fight, blue and white.” Granted, it’s no Song of David, but the steady …
Anyone old enough to remember gas lines, Love Canal, or Three Mile Island will recall a time when the environmental movement focused mainly on domestic issues. To be sure, the idea of a fragile planet was always part of the …
Blood of the Liberals, from which this piece is excerpted, tells the private and public story of three generations in the twentieth century. My maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, was a populist congressman who represented Birmingham, Alabama, from 1915 to 1937. …
To be or not to be? That was Tony Blair’s question this past spring when the British prime minister debated whether or not to take paternity leave after the birth of his fourth child, Leo. The fascinating thing about this …
The vagaries of artistic reputation are a recurrent fascination of cultural life. Canons boom but also redeploy. There is a time to gather respect and a time to cast it away. The movements of conventional wisdom up and down, to …
Four years after passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, many government and media reports have declared welfare reform a success. They measure success by reduction in the number of those receiving welfare checks and to some …
Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel ed. Richard H. Minear, introduction by Art Spiegelman The New Press, 1999, 272 pp., $25 Somehow, all the hypsters who compiled end-of-century, best-of-the-millennium lists neglected …
Half of adult Americans cannot understand jury instructions or summarize basic information about schools from a simple chart. Although some are recent immigrants, most are products of our primary and secondary school system—whose mission is to produce citizens capable of …
What Workers Want by Richard B. Freeman and Joel Rogers Cornell University ILR Press, 1999, 226 pp., $17.95 What Workers Want is a sharply focused study of how American workers think about workplace participation. Its authors, Harvard economist Richard Freeman …
