Through 200 years of manufacturing in the South Coast communities of Fall River and New Bedford, Shaun Nichols outlines cycles of growth and decline in multiple industries, raising compelling and uncomfortable questions about regional economic development.
Book Review
Posted inBook Review
The promise — and problems — of the US construction industry
More than 80 percent of construction work was union labor after World War II, but that dropped in single generation to 20 percent. Mark Erlich takes stock of what it would take to bring that number back up — and with it make construction work again a solid path to the middle class.
Posted inBook Review
Opportunity lost
The second of two takes on the new book by the state’s governor and his former chief of staff. Read the first one here, by Republican activist Ed Lyons. ALMOST […]
Posted inBook Review
Book on civil wars suggests US is entering dangerous territory
OUR NATIONAL MOOD is currently characterized by two things: anger and anxiety. Many people are angry because of the Trump presidency and his ongoing contribution to political deterioration. Others are […]
Posted inBook Review
The Book of Baker
The first of two takes on the new book by the state’s governor and his former chief of staff. Here is the second, a look at the Baker playbook from […]
Posted inBook Review
The Quabbin lesson of doing big things (mostly) together
BEFORE THE FLOOD Destruction, Community, and Survival in the Drowned Towns of the Quabbin By Elisabeth C. Rosenberg 232 pages, Pegasus Books TODAY IT MIGHT be hard to imagine something […]
Posted inBook Review
Reimagining a mutual aid society
WHEN SARA HOROWITZ got her first job as a labor lawyer at a firm in 1994, she writes, she assumed it “would come fully loaded. Benefits just came with a […]
Posted inBook Review
Scary headlines
GHOSTING THE NEWS Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy By Margaret Sullivan 105 pages, Columbia Global Reports WHEN THE OWNERS of the Middlesex News acquired the Waltham News-Tribune, […]
Posted inBook Review
A blue wave in 2020?
DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS encouraged (or alarmed) by Democratic gains in Virginia and Kentucky in November will want to read the new book by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg to see if […]
Posted inBook Review
Reforming capitalism to save it
IN THE FIVE YEARS since the publication of Thomas Piketty’s runaway bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, rising inequality has yet to force any consensus on what to do about […]
Posted inBook Review
How modern leaders got John Winthrop’s ‘City on a Hill’ wrong
AS A CITY ON A HILL The Story of America’s Most Famous Lay Sermon By Daniel T. Rodgers 368 pages, Princeton University Press THE “MORAL CAPITALISM” that Rep. Joe Kennedy […]
Posted inBook Review
Book review: Massport at 60
Massport at 60: Shaping the future since 1956 By Jim Aloisi Massachusetts Port Authority 262 pages YES, THIS BOOKÂ commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Massachusetts Port Authority, but the story […]