The Brave New World of Work

When he's good, he's great. Some passages in this book, especially those dealing with Beck's idea of a new civil society that must be forged out of the remains of the social welfare contract, are inspiring. When he's not so good, it's because he's repetitive, or because he's speaking so generally about the effects of the global economy that he veers into vague abstraction at the expense of driving his thesis home. Because it's a challenging thesis -- the idea of paid civil work as a way to (re)create a truly democratic society -- and because it's articulation is at least partially supported through data, it's easy to forgive the sometimes too-general perspective. Read as a companion "The Global Age" by Martin Albrow, which is quoted in The Brave New World of Work, and interestingly, has the same strengths and weaknesses: an interestingly theory (we've moved past the post-modern age into the "global age" wherein the interconnectedness of humanity belies old national boundaries and notions of class), and a sometimes too abstract style.