Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 11:08:06 +0100 (BST)
Subject: AUT: The Economic Horror by Viviane Forrester [Polity Press - in the UK]


Dear all

Following a review of this book which appeared in the Guardian of Tues 26 October, some of us here are wondering about the arguments made in this book. Since Liverpool is of course an intellectual backwater, despite attempts to portray itself otherwise, we have to order it - which means a wait. I just wondered if anyone had already come across it.

The Guardian says it is a besteller, 400k in France, 200k in Germany, 50k in Italy - popular also in South America, bestseller in Canada and Japan. 

If so, can folk from those parts of the world give their opinions, review or whatever ?

I quote from the review - 

> Arguably the reaction to the book is as significant as its theme. There have been other books with similar theses [notably the American, Jerremy Rifkin's 'The End of Work' published in 1995] but none has achieved such a level of success in world terms, a reaction Forrester thinks must be important politically.

"My book brought me in touch with the powerful as well as the poor and there is this strong feeling among political elites that you must not tell people the truth about today's economic realities: that they just can't take it," she says.

"In fact I found the opposite: people aren't in fact afraid, but they are indignant. They're not stupid, they can see what's going on, and the thing that really angers them is denial. Indeed its surprising how many people have told me that reading my book has actually reduced their anxieties."

" One long-term unemployed man told me that he started reading my book on a train and he was, as usual, feeling suicidal, and his only reason for not killing himself was to live for his three year old son. By the time he got off the train, he said what he had read had turned his mood and he'd decided to live - for himself."<

 . . . . . . . can this book really provoke such a reaction ?


>. . . unemployment is at its lowest [in the UK] for 19 years prompting Sir Ken Jackson, general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, to declare. "It's fantastic news. There are more people in jobs than ever before."<


Well, to quote somebody famous - he would say that wouldn't he ?


Whatever, it sounds interesting - I'll pass on to folk here whatever anyone has to say.

Thanks 

Gra



------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get your own FREE e-mail address at http://www.merseymail.com/


     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---