Austerity: The History of A Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth Oxford University Press, 2013, 304 pp. Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity versus Possibility by Robert Kuttner Knopf, 2013, 352 pp. More disheartening than the economic catastrophe in the United …
My first typo trauma came when I was a teenaged summer clerk-typist for the public information office of the state mental health department. Ever since I’d learned to read, I’d been hooked on print. Typing and proofing press releases about …
Napalm: An American Biography by Robert M. Neer Belknap Press, 2013, 352 pp. Pilots release their ordnance. Silver, cigar-shaped canisters drop away. A simple and deadly munitions miracle, the weapon represents American know-how and military necessity. For close-quarters infantry support …
The poor are pretty much absent from public and political discourse, except as an abstraction—an income category low on the Index of Socioeconomic Status—or as a generalization: people dependent on the government, the “takers,” a problem. Neither abstraction nor generalization …
For almost twenty years the phrase “Spanish architecture” was spoken in hushed and reverent tones. It evoked not just Gaudí and his perpetually unfinished spires, but a new breed of visionaries who were reinventing the profession and doing wonders for …
In 2010, a slate led by Karen Lewis ousted the incumbent leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union, promising deeper community engagement and a more aggressive defense of teachers and public education. In 2012, with Lewis as president, CTU mounted the …
When the audio book of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique was to be recorded back in 2009, producers approached Parker Posey to voice the canonical feminist text. Most known for her portrayal of lovable slacker ditzes such as the soft-serve-wielding Libby …
How can we confront the challenge of climate change, especially when those hit first and hardest by climate change are poorer and more marginalized than those with the power to take large-scale action?
In April, Hugo Chávez’s handpicked political heir, Nicolás Maduro, was elected president of Venezuela in an unexpectedly close race. Maduro will try to continue the Chavismo revolution, amid accusations of electoral fraud and the extreme polarization of the political landscape. …
Nearly two decades after the end of its brutal war, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia, for short) remains paralyzed by political corruption and ethnic mistrust. The country staggers from one constitutional crisis to another, the economy vegetates, many young people leave, …
Young people in China are divorced from their country’s recent history. With no memory of Mao Zedong, they can glean little from a censored environment. Their parents, by and large, don’t talk about their experiences
A great human disaster is now unfolding in the Eurozone countries that have agreed to slash spending, wages, and living standards. One facet of this story that has received too little attention is the effect of these measures on the health of these nations.
The March on Washington was initiated not to break down racial barriers to voting rights, education, and public accommodations but to highlight “the economic subord-ination of the Negro” and advance a “program for economic justice.”
For Zadie Smith, the time had come for the radicalism of experiment and the realism of political economy—for a new social realism that was capable of capturing both the mechanics and experience of today’s growing inequality.
Delivering flexibility and scale at rock-bottom prices, Foxconn keeps pounding out the very real underpinnings of the New Economy, remaking global manufacturing in its own image. Foxconn stands as the archetypal industrial firm for today’s planet of slums.
