capitalism

Player Piano was Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, and it's a far cry from his later work, which made lavish use of humor -- including broad humor -- and unconventional narrative, including the crude drawings Vonnegut did himself for Breakfast of Champions.

The target of Vonnegut's displeasure -- and, thankfully for us, he was always displeased about something -- in Player Piano is the corporate/technological power structure, or what Eisenhower referred to as the "military-industrial complex." For the most part, the novel is very straightforward, compared with KV's other works. The style is more

British Historian Tony Judt has written a brilliant polemic on the way we view government.  Judt’s Ill Fares the Land challenges the following notions on government: (1) government exists to aid us in getting richer, (2) public services can only be quantified by their economic value and therefore would be more efficient privatized, and (3) a free market is even possible without government regulation.  Peppered with historical examples from the late 19th century, the rise of fascism in the early 20th century, postwar-Europe, FDR’s New Deal, and LBJ’s Great Society, Judt documents how a shift