Sex and Sensibility
Having attended a women’s college and spent half of my professional life affiliated with a female institution, I know better than to believe that women are naturally more sharing, caring, and cooperative than men, although in general, they may be more polite. I’m not denying the existence of distinct masculine and feminine cultural styles or…
Clinton’s Bequest
Budget balance may turn out to be an unexpected boon to liberals; so far it has helped deliver full employment and a Social Security rescue, and has left Republicans looking economically self-serving and fiscally inept. Now can liberals build on Clinton’s clean slate?
Comment: Is Bradley for Real?
We’ve gotten our hearts broken before. Clinton, many of us hoped, was really a closet progressive who somehow also attracted moderates. His fellow southern governor, Jimmy Carter, looked to be a fine reformer for the post-Watergate era. But both presidents left legacies more conservative than liberal. Both were anti-party men. Both failed to use their…
Coelho and Company
What kind of company is Al Gore keeping?
Slouching toward Seattle
The World Trade Organization so far is a business-oriented club that has undermined the mixed economy everywhere. But it might be the framework for a global New Deal. The Seattle trade meetings could set the tone.
Behind the Numbers: Tilt!
The partisan imbalance in campaign cash.
Distancing Dad
“Would you tell your wife to pack your son an extra pair of shoes tomorrow?”
What’s Wrong with This Picture?
A dissenting opinion on American Beauty.
Consuming Passions
How the successors to Love Connection and The Dating Game reduce love to a consumer choice.
Blaming Teachers
Reformers demand a better class of teachers, but rewarding the good and weeding out the bad is trickier than it seems.
Rising Tide?
“They almost have a nostalgic quality about them, sort of like the bell bottoms stuck in the back of the closet,” writes Jeffrey M. Berry of today’s quixotic and starry-eyed liberals. “But liberalism is not dead. Indeed, it’s thriving.” In The New Liberalism: The Rising Power of Citizen Groups, Berry marshals copious evidence that over…
Naked in the Valley
Po Bronson’s The Nudist on the Late Shift and Other True Tales of Silicon Valley 12.02.99 | reviewed by Nicholas Confessore ‘Tis the season for mainstream magazines-Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek-to finally run cover stories on that newest of old trends, e-commerce. Skip them. You are unlikely to find a more vivid or readable tour of Silicon…
The Money Artist
Lawrence Weschler’s Boggs: A Comedy Of Values 12.02.99 | reviewed by James K. Galbraith Modern economists make bad historians, as a rule. The problem is that a simple-minded metaphor-supply and demand-with its deep yet subtle political commitment to laissez-faire, controls their thought. The market is supposed to rule. Therefore it does. Whatever happened, the market…
Workers United
Robert Bruno’s Steelworker Alley: How Class Works in Youngstown 12.02.99 | reviewed by Lisa Burrell Black spots on his father’s lungs convinced Robert Bruno it was time to reconnect with his family and his working-class roots. The result of his journey home is Steelworker Alley: How Class Works in Youngstown, a well- researched argument that…
The Nationalism We Need
There are two faces of American nationalism-one negative, one positive. The negative face wants to block trade, deter immigrants, and eschew global responsibilities. The positive one wants to reduce poverty among the nation’s children, ensure that everyone within America has decent health care, and otherwise improve the lives of all our people. Both give priority…
Up With Social Insurance
Max J. Skidmore’s Social Security and Its Enemies: The Case for America’s Most Efficient Insurance Program 12.02.99 | reviewed by Erik Cole One of the most remarkable items unearthed by Max J. Skidmore in Social Security and Its Enemies: The Case for America’s Most Efficient Insurance Program is a set of radio ads made for…
Rank Class
Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test 12.02.99 | reviewed by Peter Schrag The late Albert Shanker, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, sometimes made the facetious suggestion that if children were all awarded college diplomas at birth, knowledge would be pursued for its own sake and a great many of the problems of American…
America’s Global Hand
The global economy is being recast in America’s image. Do American economic planners really know what’s best for the rest of the world?
