As with any work of economics, there are dozens of arguments both for and against every plank on Prestowitz’s platform....
If you think the Great Recession was a bummer, there’s more bad news in store for the U.S. economy.
Prestowitz, Asia trade negotiator in the Reagan administration and economic advisor to the Obama campaign, takes an evenhanded view of economic events in this survey of the current fiscal landscape, a survey that is less histrionic than its title suggests and more wide-ranging than the subtitle indicates. He locates the causes of the recent “financial Armageddon” in many areas, including “greed, fraud, regulatory failure, and flawed mathematics,” but also notes that the meltdown was long overdue and represents the manifestation of policies that have been weakening the U.S. economy for years. One of the author’s bugaboos, mentioned more than once, is the false notion that somehow it’s acceptable for the United States to abandon manufacturing. He argues, coherently, that America needs to make more of the things we use and export what we don’t. Of course, that puts the United States in direct competition with China, which has the advantage of a command economy that can turn on a dime and which further counts among its assets about $2 trillion. Given that Wal-Mart alone accounts for a massive amount of the trade in cheap goods between China and America, there are many shareholders who would not want to see any change in the state of affairs—including one by which China consumes more of its own production. In the end, Prestowitz urges, U.S. leaders must take greater measures to put our economy into a state of healthfulness, including declaring energy independence, reducing the deficit—for the federal government’s financial health “is poor at all levels and likely to get worse”—and making the corporate tax environment more attractive for multinationals.
As with any work of economics, there are dozens of arguments both for and against every plank on Prestowitz’s platform. Still, he provides a vigorous, provocative look at some of the possibilities—few pretty—that lie ahead.Pub Date: May 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-1979-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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