Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology & Prosperity, by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, PublicAffairs, 560 pages, $32
I wrote this review without the aid of a secretary or a typist. The authors of the book I am reviewing seem ambivalent about this. Is the word processor really such a good thing? Maybe, they submit, the corporations of the 1980s should not have used "software tools" to "downsize their workforces." After all, automating clerical tasks destroyed "well-paying jobs for noncollege workers."
