This is a very interesting book, written by a man of the Left (Professor Walter Benn Michaels) arguing that the current focus on "identity" and "diversity" has stripped the Left of its willingness and ability to fight economic inequality. He certainly has a point; the book brought to mind recollections of my days at Yale Law School, where many students spent immense amounts of time and energy on trying to encourage "diversity" policies at the law school, all of which would benefit the already privileged, while pretty much ignoring the rampant poverty surrounding them every day in New Haven. I also more generally noted a distinct lack of interest more generally in the sorts of "bread and butter" issues that would have occupied liberal students' forebears in prior generations. Regardless of whether one thinks that diversity policies are a good idea or a bad idea, it would be hard to argue that they haven't distracted the American left, especially at the elite level, from the socialist (or merely redistributionist) project.