Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright Verso, 2010, 394 pp. A BOOK on utopias by a Marxist sociologist seems promising, perhaps even courageous. In Envisioning Real Utopias, Erik Olin Wright seeks to counter widespread cynicism about radical social transformation. …
Right Star Rising: A New Politics, 1974–1980 by Laura Kalman W.W. Norton, 2010, 473 pp. Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies by Judith Stein Yale University Press, 2010, 384 pp. Stayin’ Alive: The …
My friends treat my girlfriend, Jennifer, and me like a married couple. They have a point. We have known each other since our first year at the University of California at San Diego, and now we are on our own …
Rebound: Why America Will Emerge Stronger from the Financial Crisis by Stephen J. Rose St Martin’s Press, 2010, 288 pp. The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 by Joel Kotkin Penguin Press, 2010, 320 pp. The Next 100 Years: A …
It doesn’t take an expert to realize that the current breakdown in Turkish-Israeli relations will likely prove bad for Turkey; bad for Israel; bad for America; and, ultimately, like so much else, bad for the Palestinians. Still, one need not …
I joined the Carpenters Union in Portland, Oregon, in the spring of 1975. At the time, I was one of twenty-two million union members, representing nearly 29 percent of the nation’s work force. Today, despite substantial growth in the size …
A cartoon by Vanessa Davis.
Ever since I left Puerto Rico to begin my life in New York as a student at Sarah Lawrence College, I have thought of myself in comparison to Sergio, the hero of Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s great movie Memories …
What keeps us going? Max Weber’s famous definition of politics as “the slow grinding of hard wood” seems to apply especially to us, the men and women of the Left. For the powerful and the rich, and for the demagogues …
In recent months, a number of official announcements from inside Cuba have led to speculation that meaningful political change could be underway. From a declaration that it will release a number of political prisoners to an apology for past repression …
In the text of my article “Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools,” readers can find the sources for any material that I have quoted. For those who would like to see general sources, background material, or suggestions for further …
Underwater drilling is a tricky business. And on April 20, 2010, as British Petroleum was closing up a well it had drilled beneath the Gulf of Mexico to explore for oil, the company’s luck ran out. At the depths where …
My father moved out the summer before I began middle school, just before I turned twelve. The first months of separation were marked by his efforts to reach out to my two sisters and me. He came to all our …
I am the seventeenth or eighteenth, possibly even the nineteenth, child of my father. But who’s counting? Certainly, he’s not. I don’t know much about his relationships with all his children—in fact, I don’t even know all my siblings—so I …
“THE YOUNG are honorable and see the problems,” Paul Goodman wrote in 1968, “but they don’t know anything because we have not taught them anything.” Michael Brown’s wise and eloquent essay proves him wrong. The young know quite a lot, …
