Description: Ellen Willis looks at the state of American culture and democracy and offers an exciting view of the potential to shape a better future. She reads our society through the eyes of critics, pundits, politicians, and the culture industry, to tell us why we are unable to affect real democratic change in our institutions and in the way we understand each other. We fail to think radically.

In chapters on Victorian sexual ethics, housewives and "the economy of gratitude, " optimism and race, the cultural politics of crime, and the value of intellectual work in a culture of austerity Willis shows us precisely how we might transcend the ordinary liberal/conservative divide to create new alternatives and a more promising picture of our country.

She describes how we can construct new coalitions of activists who have more in common than our traditional definition of politics allows us to see, based on ideas we all share but seldom discuss: that equality and freedom are equal, rather than oppositional, forces and chat we can have a society where citizens can create institutions and practices that best serve us in our everyday lives. We can, simply put restore liberty to its rightful place in a democracy.

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