Book Study: "Ill Fares the Land," Tony Judt

Ill Fares the Land, by Tony Judt

"Ill Fares The Land": 27 pages; 7068 words; visuals

Preface by Ta-Nehesi Coates



“When the moment came, it was not this present volume, but Postwar—Tony’s much-lauded synthesis of European History after WWII. This was natural given my field of study—the idea of race in American life. That road necessarily led to Europe, where the idea of race was invented. And that road brought me to Tony Judt. Perhaps it was time. I was a writer in my mid-thirties, experiencing a period of novel stability and unlikely prominence.” (xi)

“It (Postwar) answered the gnawing questions for me as to why evil was so resilient, and why it was so difficult to. Bring forth the egalitarian world to which so many of us aspire. Postwar might have been grim, but it did not despair. It was a ruthless accounting of the depths to which men might sink, and it is a necessary precondition to a vision of the future that did not depend on slogans and fairy tales—that is to say, a true and durable hope.” (xi)

“Tony notes that, in 2005, about a fifth of America’s national income went to 1 percent of the population. It is a tragic testament to Judt’s book that, by 2016, that 1 percent controlled a quarter of all income, and two fifths of all wealth.” (xiv)

“never has the “eviscerated society” been more in evidence than right now. America is one of the richest countries in the world. And yet, when faced with the threat of COVID-19, it has mounted one of the weakest defenses in the world. It would be a mistake to simply see this as the result of the election of Donald Trump. The story of how America became the epicenter of a pandemic may involve Donald trump, but it began years ago, when one party took as its mission to destroy government and the other decided to grant legitimacy to that effort.” (xv)

“…when the executive seeks to bend the state go toward profiteering, Tony reminds us of the need to reject both hucksterism and the idea that everything of value can be captured in profit and loss.” (xviii)



"Ill Fares The Land": 27 pages; 7068 words; visuals