A Book Review

I thought you might like to know what I’ve been reading recently. I don’t know about you, but I find it virtually impossible to read a “serious” work of fiction at the moment, fluctuating between history books, sociological studies and Stephen King. 

In the former category, I was very impressed and moved by Tightrope by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Although it was written before the outbreak of the coronavirus, the book sets out in graphic terms the plight of the American poor today, even more starkly exposed by the present crisis. It is easy for me to judge from a distance, but I think that this wonderful country, the source of so much happiness and the stuff of our dreams, has gone badly awry since in particular the time of Reagan. I am not talking about its endemic racism as expressed by white supremacy (we in Europe are hardly in a position to point the finger), but about the “technical” decision, motivated largely by greed, to turn its back on the “big government” of the Roosevelt era and beyond, and to sink into the deregulation marking the Seventies up to  the present day, the consequences of which we are living with today. 

It is sobering to see how the victors of World War II - the USA and the United Kingdom- have become the most unequal democracies of the modern world.

NEXT: Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. What we should know about the people we don’t know.