The Andy Serwer piece is titled "Goodbye to the Decade from Hell" and is about... yep, the not always rosy last 10 years hence.
Serwer is the Fortune Magazine managing editor and details some of the things which happened since 1989: the bookended stock market drops (and we thought the tech crash in 2000 was bad), 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Hurricane Katrina. Basically lots and lots of bad stuff happened during the decade, but the piece concludes with hopeful optimism that people collectively will be able to learn from some of the missteps and move forward stronger.
To this end, the story made me think of some "hope for the future" writing that I found captivating.
In August of this year I linked to a BusinessWeek "Case for Optimism" Special Report and Time Magazine also provided several excellent pieces to the same effect. Two of them were by Kurt Andersen with "The End of Excess: Is This Crisis Good for America?" and his "The Avenging Amateur" back page essay (with my blog posts referencing each piece here and here respectively).
Also from Time was the Nancy Gibbs cover story "The Great Recession: America Becomes Thrift Nation" (referenced in this blog post).
Good writing all, but also stuff to make one feel hopeful that for most people, the next ten years will be better than the last.
