When it comes to Divides in books, here’s my takeaway:
Pick up “The Divide” by gonzo journo Matt Taibbi and pick up (and then
put down) “The Great Divide” by esteemed economist Joseph E. Stiglitz.
So much can be gleaned from a book’s first taste. (I found that to be
true of the runaway bestseller “H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald. She ends her
opening sentence with the word “indeed.” No greatness can come of that.)
So, let’s play. The Divide’s opener:
Tuesday, July 9, 2013, a blisteringly hot day
in New York City. I’m in a cramped, twelfth-story closet of a courtroom,
squeezed onto a wooden bench full of heavily perspiring lawyers and onlookers,
watching something truly rare in the annals of modern American criminal justice
– the prosecution of a bank.
The Great Divide:
The book begins with the onset of the Great
Recession, several years before the start of the Times’s Great Divide series.
The first selection was published in Vanity Fair in December 2007, the very
month the U.S. economy slipped into a downturn that would prove to be the worst
since the Great Depression.
Urgent political times demand
powerful writing (and reading) responses. The Divide answers the call. The
Great Divide, not so much.
Next: Running for Your Life: After Super Tuesday 2.0
