P.J. Boock PhD

The author of this book is clearly well-versed in modern Norwegian history and Anglo-American conversations about social democracy. However, he (or she) writes under a pen name. Why? The only conclusion is that they are afraid of being rigorously critiqued by their peers. The book has a weirdly huge font, making it seem more hefty than it needs to be, and the bibliography is scanty at best. The text is riddled with typos and typographic anomalies. It ends up reading more like a long opinion-piece on why Nordic social democracy should not be viewed as a solution to the problems of capitalism. The author ends up attacking Norwegian social democracy from the left, arguing it has failed to alleviate the problems of capitalism. This is a fair enough opinion, but the author's reluctance to engage in an open debate with academics makes the entire project suspect. Perhaps the author fears being outed as a "Marxist" or "communist" in the USA, where the average knowledge of such terms is warped at best. But a quick Google search reveals that the author has also written crime fiction with similar underlying motifs as are found in this book.

I could see writing novels or erotica under a pen name, but not a social science book on Norwegian Social Democracy. This is a very odd choice, and one that makes the work effectively useless as an academic source. So what else could the purpose be? One wonders...… (altro)