Book Review: Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart This is an excellent resource full of rich substance in decoding why otherwise reasonable people vote for governments that take a jackhammer to the foundations of their freedoms and very livelihoods. Katherine Stewart documents in laser sharp detail the …
Category Archives: Socioeconomic Policy
The Tech Coup
Book Review: The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley by Marietje Schaake The lives of most people worldwide are dominated by information technology in an inescapable way—even the poorest people (or perhaps especially the poorest people) need their smart phones to survive. Beyond just the end devices, the back end processing and …
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Book Review: At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson Using an old house as a take-off point to address housing, society, developing technology, and science, Bill Bryson guides the reader through each room of an 1851 Victorian parsonage in Norfolk, England—and uses each room as a time machine portal to multiple …
Post Growth: Life after Capitalism
Book Review: Post Growth: Life after Capitalism by Tim Jackson In this book, Tim Jackson provides a compelling explanation of how Capitalism requires an infinite trajectory of growth that is demonstrably impossible, while also providing a tangible alternative road map of how to prosper in a post growth economy. Beyond the established damning critiques of …
How the World Ran Out of Everything
Book review: How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain by Peter S. Goodman Through a gripping exposé of actual events and people caught at every point along the array of the critical supply chain dysfunctions that have affected everyone, Peter S. Goodman brings to life for the reader the lives …
White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy
Book Review: White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy by William J. Barber, II In this book, William Barber provides essential corrective focus on the common cause of both Black and white people and all other categories that separate us as well—exposing the fatal error within conservative and progressive …
The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society
Book Review: The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society By Joseph E. Stiglitz In this book Joseph Stiglitz effectively shreds the destructive neoliberal economic dogma that has caused such immense suffering for the past 50 years. Siglitz artfully debunks the theories of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek so that they now no longer …
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The End of Race Politics
Book review: The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America by Coleman Hughes This is a candid conversation that is long overdue. As a person of color himself, Coleman Hughes refutes head on the (perhaps well meaning although dogmatic) assumptions of self declared antiracists such as Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi—to offer …
How Fascism Works
Book review: How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley In this book, Jason Stanley takes an overused and sometimes misrepresented word and puts meat on its bones, as the best designator for social phenomena that are occurring in our own time. It’s written for awareness rather than alarm—although an inadequate response to this awareness would be …
Reconsidering Reparations
Book review: Reconsidering Reparations by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò In this book Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò goes beyond the usual justifications and proposals for reparations to descendants of enslaved people, to straightforwardly propose a world making project. Táíwò calls it the Constructive view. “Reconsidering” does not mean tossing out reparations, and instead expands the scope of the …