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Commemorating and Forgetting: Challenges for the New South Africa by Martin J. Murray (review)

technological advances mean that an average Manhattan bus full of smartphonecarrying riders today has more data and communications access than the entire Merrill Lynch trading floor did in 1986. What does this mean for the financial sector’s environments in the present? These questions are extensions of Gissen’s topic, and while one might fault him for not including them, it is to his credit that one wants to discuss them after reading his work. A greater disappointment is that Gissen’s writing undermines some of his own objectives. In making his arguments, he touches lightly on massive, complex issues, including gentrification, cultural imperialism, and the dominance of global finance. This makes sense, but Gissen seems to go out of his way to share his judgments in his language: one knows that he dislikes gentrification, bankers, corporations, and imperialists, among others. But these are tangential to his main project and soon become distracting. It is simply contentious to call New York City’s fiscal crisis a “bank strike” and to blame “highranking business executives” for the subsequent cuts in city services—and it appears especially superficial when the footnote offers no engagement with the extensive literature on the subject (6). Gissen describes himself as both a historian and a critic, and his use of valueladen terms in situations where he does not explain his logic is more appropriate to the latter role. With so many judgments expressed in his tone, one hopes the author will make a strong, compelling argument on the value of each of his case studies. He does not, which creates frustration with what is otherwise a clear, innovative argument backed up by compelling evidence.