Clarissa's Blog

As I said before, Gary Gerstle’s book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order is the best I’ve read on neoliberalism. Ever. And I’ve read obsessively on the topic starting in the late 1990s. (For obvious reasons, given that I lived in Ukraine back then).

The book is amazingly well-written. It simply is never boring. The writing is very accessible and never gets bogged down in unnecessary details. Gerstle has a rare talent to explain very complicated things clearly. The book is non-partisan, measured, and calm.

But.

There is one subject that invariably turns Gerstle into a bleating lunatic, warping his judgment and making him erupt in strings of boring, overly excited slogans. He’s American, so we can all figure out what that subject is. But if you skip those parts, it’s a brilliant book.