This book is the work of a critic, but it is also the work of an insider-outsider to that which it takes on. There is almost no problem probed in this book, no myth, no cloud of self-serving justification that I haven’t found a way of being part of, whether because of naïveté, cynicism, rationalization, ignorance, or the necessity to make a living. I chose not to write about these things in a personal way because I didn’t want the book to be about me. But let me say here, while I am doing some acknowledging, that I once worked as an analyst at McKinsey, that I have given not one but two TED
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