The Burden of Bad Ideas, Heather Mac Donald
The Burden of Bad Ideas, Heather Mac Donald
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The Burden of Bad Ideas
How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society

Author: Heather Mac Donald

Narrator: Anna Fields

Unabridged: 9 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/12/2001

Synopsis

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

About Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.

A non-practicing lawyer, Heather has clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and has been an attorney-adviser in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a volunteer with the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York City.

The New Jersey State Law Enforcement Officers Association conferred its Civilian Valor Award on her in 2004. She was awarded the 2008 Integrity in Journalism award from the New York State Shields. She was also the recipient of the 2008 Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration from the Center for Immigration Studies and the 2012 Quill & Badge Award for Excellence in Communication from the International Union of Police Associations.

Her writing has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, the New Republic, Partisan Review, the New Criterion, Public Interest, and Academic Questions.

Heather received her BA in English from Yale University, graduating with a Mellon Fellowship to Cambridge University, where she earned her MA in English and studied in Italy through a Clare College study grant. Her JD is from Stanford University Law School.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael

This book is a collection of articles by one of the best reporters for City Journal, the main publication of the Manhattan Institute, a pro-capitalism think tank. The first chapter describes how philanthropy has changed over the years. Great capitalists, such as Andrew Carnegie. John D. Rockefeller......more

Goodreads review by Dennis

As many of us look to government at all levels to cut spending and balance budgets, this reading points out a particularly fertile area for scrutiny. Social programs at state and federal levels are ripe with fraud and abuse as this author points out with many startling examples. Many well meaning so......more

Goodreads review by Wendi

I did not finish this book because there are a lot of upsetting ideas that the author poses without footnotes backing up her position. I wanted to like the book as MacDonald has some salient points. However, when you make charges that certain very stupid policies are being implemented, those details......more

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