Part One: Austerity, Food Summary and Analysis

Austerity: Judt's family is environmentally conscious. His wife, for example, only takes restaurant leftovers if they've been packaged in cardboard, and his children are "depressingly" informed about climate change. Judt makes the connection between his family's environmental consciousness and his own history growing up in a post-war, rationed society. During Judt's childhood, bombsites pockmarked London, and many of Judt's friends grew up in government-subsidized housing (Judt's own parents were fortunate enough to rent the apartment above the hairdresser's salon where they worked). Smog from coal fires overwhelmed the city, but everyone muddled through somehow. Because everyone in the city seemed to be struggling, their poverty banded them together, making the shortages and grayness of postwar Britain tolerable. In today's society, however, there is no shortage of destruction, but Judt notes that there is also no...