How Misreading Adam Smith Helped Spawn Deaths of Despair

A Nobel Prize–winning economist reflects on the dire consequences of libertarian economics.

Deaths of Despair

Boston Review talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton about COVID-19, the relationship between culture, financial hardship, and health, and why capitalism’s flaws are proving fatal for America’s working class. 

Response to Effective Altruism

In Rwanda, the utilitarian calculus is used against the people.

Making Aid Work — Forum Response

Evidence-based aid must not become the latest in a long string of development fads.

Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox


A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization