I went down to my local Barnes and Noble this morning, intending to buy a copy of Elizabeth Warren's A Fighting Chance, and Picketty's Capitalism in the Twenty First Century.
The first was no problem, nicely discounted by 20%. The second - I checked the new non-fiction, the economics shelf, the business shelf. When I snagged a store employee, he explained that I couldn't find it because it wasn't there. They'd all been snapped up, and there were none left in the warehouses. The store is waiting for word of when the second printing will be available.
Sure enough, Amazon is the same way. Not currently in stock, please pre-order and we'll let you know when we know.
That's right, friends and fellow hippies with bottoms permanently sore from all the ritual kicking. An academic's data-powered doorstop, its title deliberately modeled on Papa Karl, has gone viral. The Occupy movement may not be roaming the streets today, but the gospel that inequality has grown intolerable has only been gathering steam under the radar. People are hungry for more information about how the 1 percent got here, and more ammunition with which to battle them.
I'm sorry I have to wait for my pre-order to come through. But I'm suddenly a lot more hopeful than I was before I knew I would have to wait. That solid wall of Serious Person denial over the pickle we're in? I can feel it beginning to melt into air.