“One of the “two most important books on American politics to appear this year, maybe in many a year...Hacker’s is one of those prescient books that names and anatomizes a potent, ubiquitous trend that has been hidden in plain view...His book deserves the widest possible audience, for having nailed the most powerful and underappreciated economic trend of our era, thereby inviting a discussion of the political opportunities.”
— Robert Kuttner, American Prospect
“Jacob S. Hacker, a 35-year-old political science professor at Yale, has become something of an intellectual "It boy" in the Democratic Party over the last decade...The patchwork safety net created in the decades after World War II truly is shriveling, and there will be rewards for the party that comes up with a convincing solution. Hacker has done the Democrats a favor by developing a story and a catchphrase — the great risk shift — to describe the problem.”
— David Leonhardt, New York Times
“In cutting-edge polemics like Jacob Hacker's The Great Risk Shift, the smartest liberal voices are focusing on voter anxiety about health care and income volatility—anxiety that the GOP hasn't even begun to find a way to address.”
— Ross Douthat & Reihan Salam, The Weekly Standard
“Jacob Hacker's research on the uneven state of the American safety net has made the young Yale University political scientist a top idea merchant to Democratic think tanks.”
— Business Week
“Jacob Hacker, a Yale University political scientist, has emerged as an incisive voice on issues relating to retirement security and income volatility.”
— AARP Bulletin
“America's largest social class isn't upper-income, middle, or poor. It's our sprawling anxious class. As Jacob Hacker shows in this lucid and riveting account, American families are experiencing more and more uncertainty about their future, and the reigning conservative orthodoxy is exposing them to ever greater risk. Hacker lifts up the floor boards of conservative's much touted "opportunity society" and reveals the extended rot. But he also offers up a new foundation for economic security. This is an important book.”
— Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, and former U.S. Secretary of Labor
“Hacker shows that the decline in economic security is the major economic issue of our time, far more important than the occasional recessions and blips in the unemployment rate that preoccupy so many economists. This book powerfully illuminates the real scope of the problem.”
— Robert J. Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance
“The Great Risk Shift is a powerful and timely account of the forces driving the ascendance of economic insecurity in America. But Hacker does more than describe the problem; he offers a thoughtful and ambitious policy agenda and explains how each of us can make our own families more secure. This is an important book for anyone concerned about the continuing vitality of the American dream.”
— Senator John Edwards
“What Hacker so effectively documents in The Great Risk Shift is that for too many Americans, Washington's pursuit of a so-called Personal Opportunity Society has instead brought about deepening economic insecurity. From job tenure and health coverage to retirement planning, corporations and governments are offloading longstanding institutional responsibilities onto the fragile psychologies and balance sheets of ordinary families and households. Small wonder the public doesn't trust the national economy and its circumstances.”
— Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy
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