Beyond the Ivory Tower

Recent News

• Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke, authors of Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy, spoke with the University of Chicago’s ProMarket blog about why the digital economy is less competitive than we think and how antitrust law could be used to protect consumers and encourage innovation in the digital marketplace.
• Slate debuted the first episode in the 5-part podcast series “Pop, Race, and the ‘60s,” hosted by Jack Hamilton, author of Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination.
• Harvey Cox, author of The Market as God, explained to BBC Radio 4’s Sunday how the market has evolved into a kind of deity—with a functioning priesthood, texts, and sacraments [starts at 04:25].
• Branko Milanovic, author of Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization, argued at Nature that income inequality follows a cyclical pattern—and thus will eventually ebb from its current high.

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September 26: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination

In the late 1950s Chuck Berry was defining rock and roll, but by the time Jimi Hendrix died in 1970 the idea of a black man playing electric lead guitar was literally remarkable. What happened in the interim is the subject of Jack Hamilton’s Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination. The book explains how, when, and why rock and roll music “became white,” and in doing so offers an interracial counter-history of Sixties music that rejects the ideals of racial authenticity, denies generic divisions between “rock” and “soul,” and “hears together” artists that have typically been separated by critical and commercial force. We asked Hamilton to put …