By Barbara Ehrenreich
320 pages; Metropolitan

In Dancing in the Streets (Metropolitan), Barbara Ehrenreich champions the life-affirming pleasures of community and the joys of collective celebration. In medieval Europe, ecstatic religious rituals gave way to exuberant festivals that mocked the ruling classes. But such rebellious eruptions of spirit were increasingly quashed by power elites; today we censor ourselves. "My own Calvinist impulses," Ehrenreich writes, "tell me insistently to get the work done, save the world, and then maybe there'll be time for celebration." Then again, maybe the time is now.

— Cathleen Medwick