America’s potential is far greater than most of us realize. But with the GOP in turmoil, it’s up to Democrats to produce the reform agenda that can unleash it.
Books
Book reviews and essays from the Washington Monthly on the new books shaping debates over politics, policy, history, and American democracy.
Posted inBooks, Economy, Government, Magazine, November/December 2015
The Invisible Scam
What if corporate deceptions, like Volkswagen’s rigged emissions testing, are not aberrations from, but consequences of, the free market system?
Posted inBooks, Economy, Government, Magazine, November/December 2015, Politics
Federal Reserved
With a still-weak economy seven years after the 2008 crisis, it’s worth thinking about whether we might be stuck with a twentieth-century central bank in a twenty-first-century world.
Posted inBooks, Government, Magazine, November/December 2015
First We Take Manhattan
New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s public health G-men got smoking out of restaurants, trans fats out of foods, and calorie counts onto menus. The rest of the country soon followed.
Posted inBooks, Magazine, November/December 2015
Drive By
How companies like Uber work around regulations, avoid paying taxes, and shaft their workers.
Posted inBooks, Magazine, November/December 2015, Politics
A Game Plan That Should Not Die
What today’s Democrats can learn from Ted Kennedy’s maneuvering his way through and around a Republican Congress.
Posted inBooks, Government, Magazine, November/December 2015, Politics
Secrets of the Chamber
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce exaggerates the dangers of government action to its corporate paymasters and gets paid handsomely, whether it wins or not.
Posted inBooks, Government, Magazine, November/December 2015, Politics
The Revolution Will Not Be Organized
The story of Lafayette reminds us that the United States has always been borderline dysfunctional.
Posted inBooks, Economy, Magazine, September/October 2015, The Monopolized Economy
The Whiskey Ain’t Workin’ Anymore
The monopolist behind your favorite “craft” bourbon.
Posted inBooks, Magazine, Politics, September/October 2015
Restoring Henry
Niall Ferguson, Kissinger’s authorized biographer, begins the arduous task of rolling his subject’s fallen reputation back up the hill. The historian Greg Grandin kicks it right back down again.
