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Ill Fares The Land
Tony Judt
Penguin Press
March 2010
On Sale: March 18, 2010
256 pages ISBN: 1594202761 EAN: 9781594202766 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Something is profoundly wrong with the way we think about
how we should live today.
In Ill Fares The
Land, Tony Judt, one of our leading historians and
thinkers, reveals how we have arrived at our present
dangerously confused moment. Judt masterfully crystallizes
what we’ve all been feeling into a way to
think our way into, and thus out of, our great
collective dis-ease about the current state of things.
As the economic collapse of 2008 made clear, the
social contract that defined postwar life in Europe and
America – the guarantee of a basal level of security,
stability and fairness -- is no longer guaranteed; in fact,
it’s no longer part of the common discourse. Judt offers the
language we need to address our common needs, rejecting the
nihilistic individualism of the far right and the debunked
socialism of the past. To find a way forward, we must look
to our not so distant past and to social democracy in
action: to re-enshrining fairness over mere efficiency.
Distinctly absent from our national dialogue,
social democrats believe that the state can play an enhanced
role in our lives without threatening our liberties. Instead
of placing blind faith in the market—as we have to our
detriment for the past thirty years—social democrats entrust
their fellow citizens and the state itself.
Ill Fares the Land challenges us to confront our
societal ills and to shoulder responsibility for the world
we live in. For hope remains. In reintroducing alternatives
to the status quo, Judt reinvigorates our political
conversation, providing the tools necessary to imagine a new
form of governance, a new way of life.
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