I purchased The Enigma having read "Social Justice and the City" during research for my Architecture dissertation. From this I knew that Harvey has a very clear style, and his work is thorough and engaging. While this book is targeted at the lay reader (myself when it comes to economics) one feels that he is not sparing any details, it has rigor and at times can be scientific and dense. Harvey's focused writing style guides you through however, making good use of familiar contemporary and historical examples to flesh out his arguments. While throughout it is good to remember that he is coming at the issue from a firmly Marxist POV, it is interesting to get this angle, which we rarely find in the mass media. All is not perhaps as well as some would want us to believe, he is after all sighting that the problems the world economy faces is systemic, and that "Getting back to Growth" is good for neither society or capitalism itself.
Harvey takes the economic discussion away from mathematical theory and fictions, and brings it back down to the human level, commodity, land and urbanism. He reminds us of the intertwined nature of the financial and political worlds, and gives us an insight to a worrying prospect of "the party of Wall Street" continuing to take capital accumulation into dangerous, unregulated and mysterious realms.
In short, I have started reading for a 2nd time, and have just ordered a few more of his earlier books!
