Bruce Robbins is Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and the author and editor of several books, including Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence, also published by Duke University Press, and Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State. Robbins has written for The Nation, n+1, and other publications.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. The Starving Child  15
2. You Acquiesce In It: George Orwell on the System  33
3. A Short History of Commodity Recognition  51
4. The Nation-State as Agent of Cosmopolitanism  75
5. Naomi Klein's Love Story  93
6. Life Will Win  117
Conclusion: You Can't Handle the Truth  139
Notes  155
Bibliography  169
Index  177