Reply #18: West is often excellent,

[tblue37]

but he also very often slips into the sort of pompous indecipherable blather that academics love to spout. Democracy Matters is very good. Even better is a book he wrote with some woman whose name I can't remember, called The War against Parents.

In that book the authors detail the way American tax policy was used after WWII to expand the middle class, and how tax policy in recent decades has been used instead to benefit the rich and corporations, while actively undermining parents' ability to provide decent lives for themselves and their children. If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend that you do so.

I have a hardback copy around the house somewhere. If I find it I will post the publication info for you, but it is in paperback now. In fact, I bet you could order a used paperback from Amazon.com.

West frustrates me. He really is very smart and often perfectly on the mark, and yet at other times he acts like an egotistical, pompous academic of the worst sort. (And, no, I am not bashing academics. I am one.)

Harvard let him leave because he was a prima donna who felt he didn't have to do much of anything other than bless those hallowed halls with his august presence on occasion--as long as it didn't interfere with his ability to promote himself as a media star.