After the New Economy

Doug Henwood brings two decades of Left Business Observer rigor to bear on the 1990s tech and financial boom, arguing with statistical precision that the celebrated New Economy was ideology dressed as economics — a cover story for widening inequality and unchanged power structures. Named a Newsday best book of 2003, it holds up as a well-documented corrective to the era's triumphalism. The prose is sharp and readable, avoiding academic opacity without sacrificing analytical depth. The honest caveat is straightforward: this is a committed left political economy analysis, and readers skeptical of Marxian frameworks will find little common ground here. From a family-safety standpoint it is entirely clean; ideologically, readers across the spectrum should know what they are picking up.