Review: “The Quiet Coup”
A perceptive author with a great writing style tackles a troublesome topic
“Neoliberalism” has been a bogeyman term for a long time in academic circles, and not exactly the kind of term I thought would adorn the cover of a book I’d find myself enjoying quite a bit. But when the author of The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America wrote “. . . the fact that the term means nothing but can explain everything is exactly the point of the book. It was, for lack of a better term, bullshit from the start — incoherent as theory and just plain wrong empirically,” I was hooked.
Mehrsa Baradaran is a law professor specializing in banking. She appears to know her stuff, and she’s not pulling punches. The book is a blistering indictment of neoliberalism’s strong tendency to turn everything into a market, and to elevate those who think in this way into positions of authority.
Universities and scholarly publishing intersect in one big market of prestige because of it.