"Against the Terror of Neoliberalism" may be Henry Giroux's most encompassing, incisive, challenging and essential book. It is expansive in terms of the crucial domestic and international issues that are insightfully and rigorously covered, but simultaneous with the wide-ranging discourse is a vigorous focus that runs through every chapter. To read Giroux is to engage one of the leading public intellectuals, educational theorists, and prolific writers of our time. One exits the engagement with this book with a much deeper and clearer understanding of the multiple domestic and international crises and challenges we face, as well as a newly enlivened sense of commitment accompanied by the tools, hope and knowledge necessary to work to overcome these crises and challenges.
Anyone interested in gaining a much deeper comprehension of current economic, political, cultural and educational policies, impacts and directions, and anyone willing to engage, understand and confront urgent questions and concerns about youth, public education, social responsibility, violence, the pedagogical power of corporate culture, emerging forms of authoritarianism, the exploitation of workers and resources, the future, racism, militarism, the dominant media, and possibilities for developing meaningful forms of democracy will find this book thoroughly engrossing and endlessly rewarding.
No short review can capture the breadth and brilliance of this book, nor the intellectual excitement it generates. Engaging Giroux seriously is exhausting and challenging, but only in ways that are invigorating and encouraging, and because of that, all of us should be thankful that Giroux continues his dedicated, persistent and inspired work. It is at our peril that we avoid the demanding and energizing work Giroux offers and inspires.
In confronting the terrors of neoliberalism and the foreboding recurrence of increasingly fierce and destructive disasters, Giroux thinks and writes with an unrelenting urgency, rigor and clarity, necessary now more than ever, and he provides us with critical tools for thinking hard about the world. While he offers no magic bullets, easy prescriptions or simple roadmaps (there are none), he offers carefully articulated direction rooted in a realistic hope sustained in the democratic possibilities alive in our capacities to act with a combination of civic courage, a collective spirit, critical inquiry, social responsibility, and local and international solidarity, so that we do not reproduce a present that cancels our future, and so we do not lose our reality by abandoning our dreams.
Read this book, share it and discuss it with friends, neighbors, classmates, fellow workers, and teachers, and let us begin the necessary work to save our imperiled future while building what Giroux calls an informed, involved, inclusive and vibrant democracy.