The Baffler No. 19

Baffling the consensus since 1988, this journal seeks to debunk the ideology of the free market and to drive public discourse in literate and humane directions. Issues contain thundering anti-business salvos from the sharpest minds, as well as poetry, literature, and satirical art.

Contributions for The Baffler No. 19 include Thomas Frank on the age folly, Barbara Ehrenreich on our relationship to big animals, David Graeber on how technology has failed us, Chris Lehmann on the proletarian novelist Ernest Poole, and Rick Perlstein on Ronald Reagan’s path to the presidency.

Contents:

Philosophical Intelligence Office

Decrescendo
John Summers


Salvos

Too Smart to Fail: Notes on an age of folly
Thomas Frank

I Was a Teenage Gramlich
Jim Newell

Ronald Reagan's Imaginary Bridges
Rick Perlstein

Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
David Graeber

Future Schlock: Creating the crap of tomorrow at the MIT Media Lab
Will Boisvert

Revolt of the Gadgets
Robert S. Eshelman


The Dollar Debauch

Water World
Chris Lehmann


Into the Infinite

The Animal Cure
Barbara Ehrenreich


Notes & Quotes

Smells like …
Eugenia Williamson

My Own Little Mission
Dubravka Ugrešić

Disposable Hip
G. Beato


Stories

Give Her to Me
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

2312
Kim Stanley Robinson

Edge Lands
Chris N. Brown


Lives of the Pundits

Omniscient Gentlemen of The Atlantic
Maureen Tkacik


Poems

Experts are Puzzled
Laura Riding

from Odi Barbare
Geoffrey Hill

Strike!
Charles Bernstein

Syria Renga
Marilyn Hacker

Snow Globe
Peter Gizzi

Breaking Stones
Nirala

Little Princess, or The One-Eyed Girl
Nirala


Documentia

We Told You So: An advance memorandum on the jitters
James K. Galbraith


Ancestors

Cotton Tenants: Three families
James Agee