Beach Books for Tough Times

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Drama, betrayal, the struggle to survive. This summer the AFL-CIO is taking beach reading to a whole new level with a Friday lunchtime series featuring well-known authors discussing new books on jobs, inequality and the U.S. financial crisis. The series kicks off today with Jeff Faux’s “The Servant Economy: Where America’s Elite is Sending the Middle Class” and a discussion of the fight to ensure working families survive and thrive. The following week Tim Noah, author of “The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality and What We Can Do About It,” will explain income inequality in the US and abroad and how folks are fighting against it. Next Tom Palley, author of “From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics,” joins the summer series to discuss the threat of stagnation after the economic recession. The series closes out with “White House Burning” co-author Simon Johnson explaining how the current political system encourages a debt-based economy. Books will be available for purchase at all four events.