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  • Published: 15 January 2019
  • ISBN: 9780525436379
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $36.99

The Common Good



From the bestselling author of Saving Capitalism and The Work of Nations, a passionate, clear-eyed manifesto for recentering our economics and politics on the idea of the common good.

In a bracing answer to the prevailing headwinds of division, cynicism, and self-interest, Robert B. Reich makes a powerful case for the expansion of America's moral imagination. Rooting his argument in common sense and everyday reality, he demonstrates that a common good not only exists, but in fact constitutes the very essence of any society or nation. Societies, he says, undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine it, one of which America has been experiencing for the past five decades. This process can and must be reversed. But first, we need to weigh the moral obligations of citizenship and carefully consider how we as a country should relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership. Powerful, urgent, and utterly vital, this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers: a fundamental statement about the purpose of society and a cri de coeur to save America's soul.

  • Published: 15 January 2019
  • ISBN: 9780525436379
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $36.99

About the author

Robert B. Reich

Robert B. Reich is University Professor at Brandeis University and Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis’s Heller Graduate School. He is also a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He served as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. This is his tenth book. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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