Quote:
Originally posted by alkaloid
Has anyone read Paul Krugman's "The Great Unravelling"? The book's been on the best seller list for a while. He is an actual Economist, with a Ph.D and everything.
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Actually, I just finished it last night. I'll confess to being a bit disappointed in the book's actual content - mostly, it's just a collection of his columns, a large number of which I'd read before. But that doesn't detract at all from the importance of the book. It's a very focused collection, with columns arranged by topic and in an order which provides coherent narratives througout each topical area.
The book is, as is Krugman moderate-to-liberal in tone, with some very interesting departures into positions that are traditionally conservative - notably, his takes on market economies are not what you'd expect from your average liberal columnist. The subject matter is very nearly as broad as it is deep - good, if not exhaustive coverage on a wide range of issues between 1999 and early 2003. And Krugman's message is very clear: the Bush Administration is an abject failure, and is the source of many of the problems plaguing America today. He's adroit at parrying attempts to blame things on Clinton, and he's also fair enough to say what is Bush's fault and what is not. The book will probably make liberals very angry (or even angrier?) at the state of the country. It will probably make conservatives very angry at Krugman himself.
If the book has a weakness, it's Krugman's professorial style (not surprising, he is a self-described academic) and its relative choppiness - a byproduct of its format as a collection of short columns. Patience is required when reading, and a source of information on economic concepts will come in handy (your old Macroeconomics text should serve quite well - mine did). But the bottom line is that The Great Unraveling is excellent from beginning to end. That said, it's *not* a seminal work of political philosophy. It's too temporal, and too rooted in events, not theory. Krugman certainly can't be considered a modern-day philosopher, but he can and should be considered one of the best columnists out there - and this book shows why.