Ireland is deeply in debt, beholden to the IMF, the EU and the bond markets. Its economy is frozen, and years of austerity are ahead.
It didn't have to be this way - and it doesn't have to be this way. In The Good Room, David McWilliams, Ireland's most gifted and prescient popular economist, explains the bizarre economics behind Ireland's current predicament. He explains why austerity can't work and shows that history offers numerous useful models for Irish recovery.
The Pope's Children was the book that connected the dots between economics and daily life in the boom years. The Good Room does the same for the Ireland of the bust, and is - in its call for a radically different approach - an even more urgent and necessary work.
