In both Europe and North America, populist movements have shattered existing party systems and thrown governments into turmoil. The embattled establishment claims that these populist insurgencies seek to overthrow liberal democracy. The truth is no less alarming but is more complex: Western democracies are being torn apart by a new class war. In this controversial and groundbreaking new analysis, Michael Lind, one of America’s leading thinkers, debunks the idea that the insurgencies are primarily the result of bigotry, traces how the breakdown of mid-century class compromises between business and labor led to the conflict, and reveals the real battle lines. On one side is the managerial overclass—the university-credentialed elite that clusters in high-income hubs and dominates government, the economy and the culture. On the other side is the working class of the low-density heartlands—mostly, but not exclusively, native and white. The two classes clash over immigration, trade, the environment, and social values, and the managerial class has had the upper hand. As a result of the half-century decline of the institutions that once empowered the working class, power has shifted to the institutions the overclass controls: corporations, executive and judicial branches, universities, and the media. The class war can resolve in one of three ways: • The triumph of the overclass, resulting in a high-tech caste system. • The empowerment of populist, resulting in no constructive reforms • A class compromise that provides the working class with real power Lind argues that Western democracies must incorporate working-class majorities of all races, ethnicities, and creeds into decision making in politics, the economy, and culture. Only this class compromise can avert a never-ending cycle of clashes between oligarchs and populists and save democracy.

He was a true believer in communism who became disillusioned with the totalitarianism and corruption of the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. A wartime partisan leader in Yugoslavia and later the number three man in the politburo, he broke with Marshal Tito in 1954 and spent most of the next decade in prison, where he began to write about the inner workings of the Communist system. Here, Milovan Djilas--who died in 1995-- discusses why communism failed in Europe, what its failure means for the future of the continent, and how he transformed himself from ideologue into humanist. ;;;;;;;; Djilas's publication, in 1957, of The New Class, which was translated into sixty languages, caused a worldwide sensation with its description of the bureaucratization of the movement, of the special privileges accorded its leaders and cadres, and of its reliance on secret police and repression. His new book reemphasizes and enlarges on those themes, giving the reader intimate portraits of Tito and his colleagues, describing the wartime struggle against the Nazis and rival Yugoslav factions, and showing why Mikhail Gorbachev failed in his efforts to reform the Soviet system. ;;;;;;;; Controversial and courageous to the end, Milovan Djilas sharply criticized Serbia's war on Croatia, and once again is the target of vilification in his native land. Fall of the New Class is the final testament of one of the most remarkable thinkers of the century.

America's post–World War II prosperity created a boom in higher education, expanding the number of university-educated readers and making a new literary politics possible. Writers began to direct their work toward the growing professional class, and the American public in turn became more open to literary culture. This relationship imbued fiction with a new social and cultural import, allowing authors to envision themselves as unique cultural educators. It also changed the nature of literary representation: writers came to depict social reality as a tissue of ideas produced by knowledge elites. Linking literary and historical trends, Stephen Schryer underscores the exalted fantasies that arose from postwar American writers' new sense of their cultural mission. Hoping to transform capitalism from within, writers and critics tried to cultivate aesthetically attuned professionals who could disrupt the narrow materialism of the bourgeoisie. Reading Don DeLillo, Marge Piercy, Mary McCarthy, Saul Bellow, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ralph Ellison, and Lionel Trilling, among others, Schryer unravels the postwar idea of American literature as a vehicle for instruction, while highlighting both the promise and flaws inherent in this vision.

THE NEW CLASS STARTS HERE! Long after Quentin and his friends have graduated from Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, Dean Fogg invites a historic new group of students to enroll– the first ever class of hedge magicians, rogue practitioners of unsanctioned magic. But the traditional magicians aren’t too thrilled to have the rule-breaking outcasts in their hallowed halls, and tempers flare as the student bodies clash to prove their superiority – not realizing a new danger has emerged to threaten them all. The malevolence behind the threat at Brakebills will rock everyone to their cores – and even shock longtime fans of The Magicians! New York Times bestselling series creator Lev Grossman returns with an all-new story in the world of The Magicians with award-winning writer Lilah Sturges (The Magicians: Alice’s Story) and rising star artist Pius Bak that features the first appearance of the next generation of heroes and villains. Collects The Magicians #1-5.

Extensively revised, the second edition of The New Class Society includes innovative new sections and concepts throughout the book that identify and explore how complex organizational structures and actions create and perpetuate class, gender, and racial inequalities. The authors describe how 'inequality scripts' shape the hiring and promotion practices of organizations in ways that provide differential opportunities to people based on class, gender, and racial memberships. The authors also illustrate how privileged class members benefit from organizationally-based and perpetuated forms of inequality. The second edition retains its provocative argument for of an emerging 'double-diamond' social structure and its focus on class interests that are rapidly polarizing American society. New figures, tables, and references incorporate the latest information and research findings to document and illustrate key topics, such as the distribution of wealth and income, globalization, downsizing, contingent labor, the role of money in politics, media content and consolidation, the transformation of education, and the erosion of democracy. The second edition combines scholarship with an engaging style and flashes of comic relief-with several cartoons by some of the best satirists today. The book, accessibly written for undergraduate students, has been widely adopted in courses on stratification, economic sociology, and American society.