Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed (Cultural Politics and the Promise of Democracy) [Paperback]

Henry A. Giroux (Author)

Book Description

Series: Cultural Politics and the Promise of Democracy | Publication Date: March 28, 2008

With its dream worlds of power, commercialization, and profit making, neoliberalism has ushered in a new Gilded Age in which the logic of the market now governs every aspect of media, culture, and social life from schooling to health care to old age. As the social contract becomes a distant memory, the new corporate state distances itself from workers and minority groups, who become more disposable in a new age of uncertainty and manufactured fear. This is the only book to connect the history, ideology, and consequences of neoliberal policies to education and cultural issues that pervade almost every aspect of daily life. A significantly revised and updated new version of Giroux's 2003 book, The Terror of Neoliberalism, this book points to ways in which neoliberal ideology can be resisted, and how new forms of citizenship and collective struggles can be forged, to reclaim the meaning both of a substantive politics and of a democratic society.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Henry Giroux has done it again! Against a fastball from Wall Street, the World Bank and the IMF, and the ideologues and practitioners of free market fundamentalism, he smashes a home run. Giroux surgically and decisively dissects the contradictions and the brutal inhumanity and injustice of the free market. He also provides the outlines for a roadmap to get out of this living hell. --Robert W. McChesney, author, The Problem of the Media

One of the most powerful critiques of the current U.S. regime to date, as precise as it is well-documented, as courageous as it is wide-ranging. --Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science

Henry Giroux is society's teacher and conscience. Refusing the easy divide between cultural criticism and economic analysis, he demonstrates the strategies and techniques by which market fundamentalism is profoundly changing the people s everyday lives and threatening the values that define our common heritage. --Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

About the Author

Henry A. Giroux is the Global Television Network Chair Professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. He is the author most recently of The University in Chains (Paradigm 2007).

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Paradigm Publishers (March 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594515212
• ISBN-13: 978-1594515217
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #682,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reading Giroux is Essential, May 31, 2008

By 

D. morris "ortzaak" (new mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed (Cultural Politics and the Promise of Democracy) (Paperback)

"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.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Urgent Analysis by Our Premier Educator, June 3, 2008

By 

Brian M. McKenna (East Lansing, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed (Cultural Politics and the Promise of Democracy) (Paperback)

I started reading Henry Giroux back in 1983 and have never stopped. His inaugural book, written while he was only in his 30s, "Theory and Resistance in Education," remains a powerhouse guide to radical education. But nothing prepares us for Giroux's latest work. His "Against the Terror of Neoliberalism" is a red star exploding. Densely packed with brilliant insights into the black hole which is proto-fascist America, the book explains how things have gone badly wrong and where we are likely heading -- unless we abort and radically change course. It seems that Giroux has read everything. Like CLR James, Giroux is a towering people's intellectual who writes with incredible depth and ferocity. One never tires of reading and rereading him. What makes him such a commanding figure is his honest-to-goodness compassion. Giroux embodies Che's idea that love is at the heart of revolutionary change. Long may he write - and lead.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential, Urgent and Powerful, June 29, 2008

By 

Adam Fletcher (Olympia, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed (Cultural Politics and the Promise of Democracy) (Paperback)

Teachers, youth workers, and parents who want to change the world: Read this book. Henry Giroux has written the essential book for anyone who wants to understand the powerful forces that are changing our world today, and the effects these forces are having on the most important people we work and live with everyday: children and youth. If you are tired of the over-simplified Fox News-style explanations of increased poverty, demoralized social fabric and machoistic militarism that come from most mainstream progressive sources, then Giroux's new book is a great read. He puts everything into context: education reform, the American empire, and increased jailing all find their places in the mess of modern U.S. culture, and better yet, Giroux doesn't hesitate to tell it like it is.

As a parent, an educator, and as a youth worker I recommend this book strongly to anyone yearning to understand why, how, and where our young people fit into - and need to fit into - the world today. Because of this book I am looking in my own "educated hope," and am now recommitted to "make the promise of a democracy and a different future worth fighting for." I hope you are, too.