Earlier this year some 2,000 of the world's most prominent business and political leaders — among them Bill Gates and the President of Brazil, also George Soros and the Chairman of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank — made their way to Davos, Switzerland, for the 27th annual meeting of The World Economic Forum. For five days and six nights on the summit of an alp made famous by Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, the lords of capitalist creation brooded upon the mysteries of the global economy, wondering what had gone wrong in Japan and Indonesia, what, even now, is going wrong in Russia, and what might go wrong next year when Europe attempts the experiment with its new euro currency. The financiers and the politicians brought with them a wealth of good intentions as well as what the correspondent for London's Financial Times estimated at “roughly 70% of the world's daily output of self-congratulation.” They conducted their deliberations in the company of several hundred representatives of the world's business press, most of them accustomed to filing their reports in the language of a corporate press release.

But this year the quorum of journalists included the incongruous presence ofLewis Lapham, a writer known for his not always flattering portraits of America's ruling and possessing classes. The larger cast of an international plutocracy assembled in festive conference under a blue alpine sky presentedLapham with a broader canvas on which to exercise his considerable talent forkeen observation and sardonic wit.Diligently attentive to the program of scheduled events, Lapham goes to briefings on the outlook for Thailand and the subtleties of corporate espionage, carries forward the discussions over lunch or dinner at picturesque resort hotels, listens to speeches by eminencies as grave and diverse as Newt Gingrich, John Sweeney, the Chairman of Toyota, and the Vice Premier of China. He encounters finance ministers and professors of economics who gaze into the glass of the future and see little else except their own reflections. After five days in Davos he understands that the masters of markets and captains of commercial empire know as little about the likely movements of the global economy as the waiters supplying them with plum brandy and cheese fondue.

Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's Magazine, has been praised by Annie Dillard as “one of our most brilliant writers and thinkers: and described in Vanity Fair as a journalist “in the tradition of Mencken and Twain.” His previous books include Money and Class in America, The Wish for Kings, Fortune's Child, Imperial Masquerade, Hotel America (Verso) and Waiting for the Barbarians (Verso).

Praise for Lewis Lapham's previous book, Waiting for the Barbarians:

“[Lapham's] a latter-day Mencken or Twain, our last best hope for literary journalism, or any kind of journalism that isn't lazy and shamelessly reverential of money.” — John Cook, Washington City Pages

“In this aptly titled collection of 25 exquisite essays, Lewis Lapham, depicts an ugly America.” — New York Times

96 pages


Cloth
ISBN-13: 978 1 85984 710 7
£10 / US$15 / CAN$21