The Golden Age Is in Us: Journeys & Encounters 1987-1994

Presented as a diary of Alexander Cockburn’s life from 1987-1994, The Golden Age Is in Us is an engaging and intelligent mix of memoir, travelogue, personal correspondence, and political polemic. The closest comparison is probably Tocqueville (or perhaps Mark Twain), but Cockburn’s book is more personal, more passionate, wider-ranging, and (unlike most leftist writing) more optimistic. The title and epigraph come from Claude Levi-Strauss who wrote in Tristes Tropiques: “If men have always been concerned with only one task—how to create a society fit to live in—the forces which inspired our distant ancestors are also present in us. Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done but turned out wrong, can be done again. The Golden Age, which blind superstition had placed behind [or ahead of] us, is in us.” Highly recommended.