and the peculiar brand of self-knowledge-at-a-distance for which we have Gallup and Kinsey to thank.

In what could be a companion volume of sorts to Ehrenreich’s book, a scholar meditates on the rise of public-opinion polling in the U.S. Although Ehrenreich’s scope is vast, and the more visceral type of communitarianism she calls for is appealing, her book lacks the passionate urgency of its ostensible subject and remains somewhat inert. The author of Nickel and Dimed probes the curious history of “collective joy,” portraying the advance of Western civilization as a determined campaign to purge ecstasy and fellow feeling from daily life. Time to recognize yet another awakening giant snapping at our heels.ĭancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan)

This briskly written, vivid account shows how that subcontinental country’s films, technology, and service industries have made India an ever-growing presence on the American scene. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men meets The Rough Guide, as the astonishingly prolific Vollmann (whose recent works include a 3,300-page treatise on the nature of human violence, and a National Book Award–winning novel) here meditates on poverty, asking poor people on six continents the direct and often complicated question, “Why are you poor?” Vollmann relates numerous haunting vignettes but no silver linings, and creates a remarkably detailed picture of the banality of human suffering, as well as of the limits of writerly observation in altering or ennobling it: “In appropriate contradiction of this book’s hopes and pretenses, poor people’s answers are frequently as impoverished as their lives.”Īmerica’s obsessive focus on China tends sometimes to obscure how amazingly fast India is transforming itself into an economic superpower.

“On balance,” he concludes, “Americans historically brought far more beneficence than avarice to the Middle East and caused significantly less harm than good.” In this survey of U.S.–Middle Eastern engagement, a leading Israeli historian argues that our relationship with the Middle East has always been inseparable from our sense of ourselves.

Shameful flight by stanley wolpert