Barbara Ehrenreich

What’s not to love about this premise? After mucking around in America’s economic malaise for the last half-dozen years, during which time she produced the best-selling Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, one of our most astute social commentators turns her attention to a more cheering subject: communal ecstasy. Such eruptions throughout history, Ehrenreich contends, are as much a product of biology as culture, and through her examinations of everything from ancient revels, revolutionary fervor, rock-and-roll rebellion, and the bandwagon histrionics of sports fans, she demonstrates the innate human need for mass expressions of shared happiness.