Dreamland: An Evening Standard 'Best New Book' of 2021

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He contributes to a variety of local and national charities, and is a major contributor to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame, where he provides scholarships, internships, and a fellowship annually. His central contention is that the American left has largely abandoned fighting for basic economic improvement for the working class. Unwitting patients soon found themselves addicted to the drug, and underground markets developed in which people scammed willing doctors, like David Procter, for phony prescriptions they would sell on the streets for profit. But there was a slightly off-putting tendency to reiterate something’s meaning after it occurred - as if the reader wasn’t clever enough to figure it out or keep up on their own.

One recent study estimated that it would take five Earths to sustain the global human population if everyone had the consumption habits of Americans. Moreover, the libertarian reader of “Ours Was the Shining Future” might argue that, to the extent that our own dynamism has been deficient relative to America’s pre-1970s trend, that deficiency reflects not neoliberal overreach but all the ways in which neoliberalism simply failed — in its efforts to prevent the growth of regulation, the capture of government by entrenched interests, the culture of safetyism throttling innovation in fields from medicine to nuclear power. Lani is joining Dara’s firm, and the timing is impeccable for undermining the years of cutthroat efforts and ludicrous hours she’s sunk into her job trying to secure a partnership. In Florida, Colby meets Morgan Lee, and recent college graduate, spending time on the beach with her friends before they start their real life.That heterodoxy coexists with a core argument that’s more congenial to Biden administration policy, especially insofar as the Biden White House has tried to adapt somewhat to Trump’s populist critique. Whereas Leonhardt, I think it’s fair to say, is a man of the moderate center-left both in ideological predispositions and in personal temperament, which lends his reconsiderations a more unpredictable aspect and gives some of his criticisms greater heft. A deeper issue is the assumption that economic growth can somehow float free of ecological constraints.

I don't know if it's just me but the cover seemed to promise magic and it was a slight disappointment when I read the summary and realized there would be none. I was raised in Sheepshead Bay in the shadow of the former racetrack and swam at the beaches where the three luxury hotels stood long ago.

Bilyeau excels at writing atmosphere and setting, and for much of this novel I really felt like I was wandering around Dreamland, one of Coney Island’s amusement parks, seeing the bright lights, hearing the pitches of the people working the booths, smelling popcorn, hotdogs and fried onions - loved that!