Category: Book Reviews

Overrated, repetitive, inconsistent, and terribly out of date just 18 months after publication. Don’t get me wrong. I think Ezra Klein is one of the great liberal thinkers of our time. His book with Thompson begins with a reasonable principle: government assistance–to anyone, except maybe the military–from food stamp recipients to scientists and contractors must conform to so many rules and such a mountain of paperwork that progress has become stiflingly slow. Try to build a windfarm, high-speed rail, or affordable housing, so the argument goes, and requirements to assure that minorities have been given a fair chance in the...