In closely reported stories from the streets of New York to the seats of intellectual power, MacDonald shows how bad ideas get started and then acquire a life of their own. Her reports trace the transformation of influential opinion-makers and large philanthropic foundations from confident advocates of individual responsibility, opportunity, and learning into apologists for the welfare state. The prevailing orthodoxy of ideas, she finds, has affected our schools with ruinous consequences for our children. While these beliefs have damaged the nation as a whole, she observes, they have hit the poor especially hard. When it comes to urban problems and social policy, The Burden of Bad Ideas is more than a breath of fresh air. It’s a cold shower. “ . . . MacDonald is, as readers of this volume will discover, indispensable.”—George Will
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Heather Mac Donald is the national bestselling author of The War on Cops, a Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor of City Journal. A former aspiring academic with roots in deconstruction and postmodernism, she has been the target of violent student protest for her work on policing. She received the 2005 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement. Her writings have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Republic, and Partisan Review, among others. She lives in New York.
Kate Fleming (a.k.a. Anna Fields) (1965–2006), winner of more than a dozen Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award in 2004, was one of the most respected narrators in the industry. Trained at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, she was also a director, producer, and technician at her own studio, Cedar House Audio.