Largely set in Boston, Fanny Howe's Economicsexamines with an unwavering eye the necessary errors of the 1960s liberalism and consequences of Cold War politics. A white liberal couple adopts a black child with troubling results; two old friends from the Kennedy campaign meet years later to discover how different their lives have become; a separated working-class couple drives to the Cape to collect the prize from an instant lotto game. In each story, love is eroded by class expectations and financial pressures, by racial tensions and ideological hypocrisies. As a result, Economicsoffers a raw portrait of the last three decades that is at once comic and devastating.