ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Crises of Democracy by Adam Przeworski
Dangers of the global democratic deficit investigated
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
WESTERN democracy came about as a political device preventing the broader population — for the most part illiterate and poor at the time — from having any say in shaping policy and the economy in particular, asserts Adam Przeworski in this book.
He quotes the fourth US president James Madison, Simon Bolivar and Henry Kissinger as believing that “the people” cannot be trusted because they can “err.” That is what upset Kissinger when Chileans “irresponsibly” elected Salvador Allende — or the Grenadians Maurice Bishop, for that matter.
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