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RedditLike others who write for money, I immediately started calculating author Alan Greenspan's word rate. He is writing an $8 million book. Suppose it's 500 pages long: That's $16,000 a page. If the computer is set properly, he will earn $500 a word. This calculation is not made in envy but for vicarious pleasure. Imagine sitting at the keyboard, you type a word--ka-ching--another $500 richer.
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Truth and Consequences
Amy Alexander: Who's more to blame in the Love and Consequences hoax: the faux ghetto girl or the credulous book editors and reviewers who so eagerly snapped up her story?
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Chafee Chastened
Eyal Press: In his recent memoir, former GOP insider Lincoln Chafee boldly decries the Bush era.
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Lives on the Ground
Adina Hoffman: New memoirs from Israel and Palestine offer the chance not to escape the political conflict but to grasp the way it impacts daily life.
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The Dot Matrix
Laila Lalami: In I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody, novelist Sinan Antoon explores themes of love, loss, identity and resistance in the face of political oppression.
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The Nijinsky of Ambivalence
Morris Dickstein: During a Vietnam War protest, Norman Mailer blustered and banged a generation's experience through his prodigious ego.
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Judging Thomas
Jon Wiener: A close look at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reveals a deeply conservative and increasingly bitter man.
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ART in America
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow: Two new books explore the possibilities and ethical complications of assisted reproductive technology.
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Waiting for 'The Big One'
William Greider: Nobody knows if the current financial crisis could become the type of economic unraveling that makes history.
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Church of Free Trade's Apostates
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The Establishment Rethinks Globalization
William Greider: An unlikely dissident has proposed a new way to understand, and reform, the world economy.
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Stockman's Folly
William Greider: After all these years, will Reagan's budget chief go to jail for cooking the books?
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Senator Inevitable
William Greider: Nothing personal, but Hillary Clinton is a candidate of the past.
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EPI's Agenda for Change
William Greider: Americans are ready for big, bold ideas to heal our social and economic wounds.
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A Globalization Offensive
William Greider: In 2007 Congress may get real on the fallacies and contradictions of global trade.
Alan, can you touch it up a bit? Maybe a little personal warmth that makes you sound, well, human? Tell us if Bush is as clueless as he seems. Or give an anecdote or two that reveals that unknown towering intellect. Or Bill Clinton: How did you charm him into dumping his working-class constituents and embracing your bond-market economics? Did he cry when you won the argument? Stuff like that.
A Greenspan memoir will do fine in the marketplace. It is the kind of Important Book daughters buy for father's birthday. In the unlikely event Greenspan tells the truth, it would be a sensational bestseller.
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