Examines the wide-ranging importance of Europe's new single currency beyond its impact on financial markets and the economy itself.

Building on one of sociology's core ideas that social ties can shape collective outcomes Democracy's Voices shows that connections across class boundaries can remake public rhetoric and thus the quality of democratic life. Robert M. Fishman takes up a question of enduring significance to people concerned with the quality of democratic public life, focusing on why political rhetoric proves engaging and broadly relevant, or disengaging and narrow. The answer to that question, he argues, is to be found not only in the deeds of prominent politicians and the nature of official institutions but...