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 and 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, Judt argues that we must look to our not so distant past and to social democracy in action: to re-enshrining fairness over mere efficiency.

Social analysts Alvin and Heidi Toffler turn their attention to the revolution in wealth now sweeping the planet. This book is about how tomorrow's wealth will be created, and who will get it and how. But 21st-century wealth, they argue, is not just about money, and cannot be understood in terms of industrial-age economics. They write about everything from education and child rearing to Hollywood and China, from everyday truth and misconceptions to what they call our "third job"--the unnoticed work we do without pay for some of the biggest corporations. In earlier work, they coined the word "prosumer" for people who consume what they themselves produce. Here they expand the concept to reveal how many of our activities--parenting, volunteering, blogging, painting our house, improving our diet, organizing a neighborhood council--pump "free lunch" from the "hidden" non-money economy into the money economy that economists track.--From publisher description.

"From the acclaimed author of Kids These Days, this collection of new and selected essays traces how inequality, student debt, and over-work have come to define our culture and our lives. Our economic situation, political discourse, and future prospects have gotten much worse since a guy brought a sign that said SHIT IS FUCKED UP AND BULLSHIT to the Occupy Wall Street protests at Zuccotti Park. We all knew what he meant . . . but where are we now? And how did we get here? Malcolm Harris, one of our most exciting young cultural critics, takes on these questions, examining everything from how we've become complicit in lowering the bar for what counts as prosperity; to how we sacrificed privacy so casually we didn't even notice; to the higher education financial bubble that is about to burst. But these funny, voice-driven essays remind us to laugh at the absurdity of all: he cops to being the guy who tricked protestors into thinking Radiohead was playing Occupy Wall Street; he demonstrates how uncannily the Ikea catalog now reflects our worldview; and he assures us Marx saw the necessity of a crisis moment just like the one we're in. This wide-ranging look at the mess we're in shows a versatile cultural critic at the height of his powers"--