Advances in Evolutionary Algorithms Research

"The Middle Riddle, Volume 1: The State of the Class" is the first volume of two books dealing with the topical subject of the middle class. The bent of the first volume is more empirical compared to the second, more theoretical volume. What is the issue is only a relative emphasis on this or that side of analysis, as it is clear that an examination of empirical materials must be theoretically informed if it does not want to be reduced to a superficial description. Both conceptual investigation and explanation need to be embedded in a wider analytic framework. Thus, one of the chief merits of the books concerned is precisely that both are grounded in the same coherent, and moreover innovative framework. While this originality may not necessarily be of interest to all readers, what should attract their attention is the output of the aforementioned conceptual apparatus, as it equally encompasses unconventional insights, in many ways questioning the received wisdom. Suffice it to say that the main thrust of the entire study could be brought down to two twin claims, the first of these being developed in the first volume. While the academician will be able to find in our work some food for thought, the general educated reader also may find much of the book's style and content attractive. Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, and even without any particular cherry-picking, the reader surely will come across some pieces that would be to her taste. For instance, the volume contains a reinterpretation of the mainstream views on the nature on the U.S., and not only U.S. capitalism, in which intellectual recasting has been prompted by the recent crisis and its aftermath.