Description

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At a time when political writing and cultural criticism have come to be dominated by an insipid and unthinking moralism, David Rieff's essays offer a bracing antidote. The writings collected in Desire and Fate cover topics as diverse as censorship in contemporary publishing, the cultural ubiquity of the notion of trauma, and the future of democracy on a global level. They are all characterised, however, by an incisive intelligence and a refreshing lack of wishful thinking; together they confirm Rieff's status as an indispensable writer and thinker.

About the Author

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David Rieff is one of the United States's leading authorities on global affairs. Renowned for his reporting from conflict zones and on the work of international humanitarian organisations, his writings have shaped public debate on subjects ranging from liberal interventionism to the use and abuse of historical memory. He is also a widely published commentator on contemporary American culture and the author of an acclaimed volume of memoirs. His many books include At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention, Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir, The Reproach of Hunger: Food, Justice, and Money in the Twenty-First Century, and In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies.