Economics Review

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Economics ReviewAs an instructor of economics who uses this book for undergraduate classes, I would say McConnell and Brue's book is probably the best text to introduce students who may have no background or appreciation for the study of economics. This is the latest edition of the text, and each edition tries to take into account the current trends in society. It is well written and contains clear, concise analyses to examine important concepts and principles that have taken centuries to theorize and to validate. The authors also use several real world examples and case studies to help the reader apply economic concepts to business and societal problems. I still remember using an earlier edition of the authors' text when I was an undergraduate student a number of years ago. I found it meaningful and practical then , and I find it quite valuable now as a teacher. Some things never change!
I would higly recommend this text to students taking their introductory courses in economics. The material presented is quite relevant to the development of an understanding and appreciation of how humans and society satisfy their unilimited wants and needs given scarce resources and limited choices. I like to refer to it as "the philosophy of life." It never put me to sleep! No wonder why numerous academic institutions use Macconell and Brue's book as the standard text for their introductory economic courses.Economics Overview

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Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding--And How We Can Improve the World Even More Review

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Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding--And How We Can Improve the World Even More ReviewAfter so many years of development-bashing, it began to feel like there was just no hope for sorting out the problems in the developing world. Even more depressingly, authors like Dambisa Moyo managed to court global fame, peddling views which were not only highly partisan, but poorly researched and ignored any contrary evidence.
So Charles Kenny's book is certainly a ray of sunshine; an island of hope in the sea of negativity. So of course the temptation is to hold this up and say 'ha! we knew we were right all along. development does work!' The book - which trumps the aforementioned Moyo on almost every level in terms of research, clarity of thought, balanced argument and all the rest, certainly does offer a new perspective on the progress of the poorest in the world. But 'poorest' is perhaps the wrong word to choose, as the central conceit of the book is that the relentless measurement of income as an indicator of quality of life - the 'dollar a day' epidemic - is misleading, because as his research shows, there is almost no link at all between growth in income and improvement of quality of life. In countries where there has been no growth at all, certain indicators like life expectancy have improved by as much as 50%, and conversely in countries where there has been steep economic growth such as China or Botswana, there is often a decrease in life indicators.
Kind of seems illogical doesn't it? One can buy into it fully, and accept that it takes someone with a totally new take and perspective to blow apart orthodoxies, and Charles Kenny is that man. One can put the shutters up, and just say no way, one man can't change the tide of all the other naysayers. But perhaps the middle ground, and which i felt, was that my pleasure at the positive measure was mixed with a slight discomfort that exactly matches how i feel when i read a negative book on development, written econometrically.
The thing is that econometrics doesn't, to me, seem to really capture the subtelties of development, nor the human dimension. It looks at national statistics, often over decades, and from times when collection methods were patchy and unreliable at best. Just because the data show a correlation, does it mean that this is positive evidence? The outcome of Kenny's analysis too, is potentially dramatic. If, as he suggests, we simply don't know how to foster economic development and growth, should we stop trying, and simply allow the hugely complex and context driven forces do their work? He suggests africa's time will come, as have all other regions, but is this enough for the people in africa who are struggling today?
But, like all development books, this should not be read alone. All the different theorists add their ideas into the development mix, and it is up to us to decide which parts we feel are right. There is no one answer, nor will there ever be; those who suggest there is are wrong. But this is an intelligent, well researched book that hopefully will be the start of a trend of analysis that looks beyond cliche, sees the bigger picture and the longer term, and most of all is positive and hopeful. People's lives depend on it.Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding--And How We Can Improve the World Even More Overview

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Class Matters Review

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Class Matters ReviewMost books about race and class in America tend toward the macroscopic, marshalling their arguments behind surveys, statistics, and broad statements of theory or conjecture. Case studies or anecdotes about specific individuals are presented, if at all, to illustrate and particularize from whatever generalized conclusions their authors happen to be espousing. Such works of course serve useful purposes, but they can seem coldly impersonal, lacking any sense of the human lives that comprise all those statistics. Only occasionally do writers like Studs Terkel or Barbara Ehrenreich come along to put a human face on these issues.
Journalism, on the other hand, revels in the particular. Human drama provides the attraction, and individual stories create the base from which to propel the writer into broader statements of issues and positions. Thus, it is hardly surprising that CLASS MATTERS, a book compiled from stories previously published about class in America by the New York Times, should consist largely of anecdotes.
That it works so well is a tribute not just to the writers themselves, but to the editorial framers of this collection. CLASS MATTERS addresses the great taboo of America, the myth of a classless society. Never does the book claim that American life is caste-bound or separated into rigid classes. Rather, the opening chapter asserts that while class mobility still exists (that is, one can be born poor and lower class but, through dint of steady self-application in school and hard work thereafter, the opportunities for "upgrading" oneself are effectively limitless), the degree of such mobility has lessened considerably in the last 30 years. Never has it been more true that the best choice one can make in life is one's choice of parents, and economic trends and (especially) Republican public policy are only exacerbating the problem.
The bulk of CLASS MATTERS is taken up with extended newspaper articles that articulate various aspects of class in America and its effect on people's lives. For example, the opening chapter details the crises of three individuals who suffered heart attacks - how their responses, emergency care, choice of doctors and treatments, and follow-up care differed according to their socioeconomic class. Other stories document interclass marriages (she upper, he lower), a lawyer whose return to her Appalachian roots forces her confront class differences, an immigrant Mexican restaurant worker in New York struggling to survive while working for a successful, Greek immigrant boss, and an upward-striving family of corporate nomads bouncing from one big city bedroom community (like Alpharetta, Georgia) to another.
CLASS MATTERS occasionally detours (to its positive credit) away from pure case history reporting to discuss more general topics. One of the most telling concerns the dropout rate in American four-year colleges (only 41% of low income students manage to graduate within five years) and the increasingly middle-class nature of those colleges' student bodies. As Anthony Marx, President of Amherst College, is quoted as saying, "If we are blind to educational disadvantages associated with need, we will simply replicate these disadvantages while appearing to make decisions based on merit." In one simple statement, Mr. Marx hits dead-on the most crucial educational issue of 21st Century America. Other chapters discuss the treatment of class in American fiction and cinema and the efforts of corporate marketers (BMW, Godiva, cruise lines) to downscale their products to lower classes while retaining the aura of upper class luxury.
The book's closing chapter, "Angela Whitaker's Climb," is by far its most affecting piece. The story describes the Herculean efforts of Ms. Whitaker, a middle-aged Chicagoan with five children by nearly as many different fathers, to turn her life around through nursing school. A tenth grade high school dropout and a former crack addict, she loses two of her sons to the streets but manages to get an Associate's Degree, pass her nursing exams, and find professional employment that puts her solidly into middle class life. Yet every day is a precarious balance: struggling to make ends meet, keeping her children on the right path, and satisfying the financial needs of her extended family. While Ms. Whitaker's story is touching for its emblematic demonstration of the Horatio Alger myth, her difficulties in achieving success make it clear that she is unusual, one in perhaps ten thousand, or maybe one in a million. Her success is admirable, but it is the extraordinary odds against that success that make her story a chilling, almost frightening tale of class in America.Class Matters Overview

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A Geography Of Time: On Tempo, Culture, And The Pace Of Life Review

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A Geography Of Time: On Tempo, Culture, And The Pace Of Life Review"A Geography of Time" is an almost-excellent study of perception of time, and how this perception is affected by culture and location. A new vocabulary is introduced to the reader, along with a host of new ideas about time, including "event time," "natural time," and the familiar "clock time." The author's research is enlightening and challenging.
The concepts are easy to absorb, and the subject is well-researched and documented. I have no doubt that Levine's work is strong. Some of the work involves providing evidence for well-known concepts, such as bigger cities have a faster pace than smaller cities. Interesting correlations are drawn between the pace of a location and the accuracy of it's timepieces. I found the concept of being able to train oneself to elongate and condense time perception to be particularly interesting, such as in the case of a martial artist who moves fast by forcing an opponent to appear to move slow. Other interesting tidbits include the "contradiction of Japan," which shows that an ultra-fast paced life can be balanced out with cultural rules to prevent aggression, and how a slow-paced city is not necessarily kinder than a fast-paced city.
The reason why "A Geography of Time" is only almost-excellent is due to the author's skills as a writer. Ideas are not presented in a structured manner, information is redundantly repeated and personal opinions are freely mixed with research and evidence. Some difficult concepts, such as Einstein's time dilatation in Special Relativity are introduced as window dressing for what amounts to a sociological subject. A brief history of the introduction of clocks in America is included. The last chapter is almost a "self help" opinion piece by the author, on how to use knowledge of time to greatest advantage.
All in all, while the research is interesting and the concepts are worth reading, the book would have benefited from a tighter focus on the author's part. The book wander's lazily from concept to concept, and hurts the material overall. All in all, worth reading and enjoyable, but falling just short of the mark.A Geography Of Time: On Tempo, Culture, And The Pace Of Life Overview

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The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer Review

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The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer ReviewI've read a lot of books about sports in my relatively short time on this planet and while I have really enjoyed many of them and reread a few multiple times, this was definitely the first sports-related book I have ever NOT wanted to finish. Based on my rating, you can tell I mean this in a completely positive way: this book was easily one of the most informative and engaging texts I have ever had the pleasure of reading.
The main point of this text is the history of soccer (or football, whichever you may prefer - I'm an American, so soccer it is), which is clear from the subtitle on the cover. Yet there is so, so, so much more contained within the roughly 900 pages that span the book's binding. You have a lot of politics, great human successes and failures, stories of survival and disaster, as well as small passages that set you in a certain time and space where Goldblatt takes you to a scene important to the chapter or section.
For a well-read fan of the game, the importance of this book lies in the first half of it, as Goldblatt starts from the very beginning, discussing ball games of the ancient world, moving to the late 19th century and the creation of the English FA and the FA Cup, the development of professionalism (both accepted and hidden) versus amateurism, and while he obviously takes the history all the way to the present, the first half of the book opens up a history of the sport that many know absolutely nothing about. Soccer in the first half of the 20th century is not a well-known history, one Goldblatt marvelously elucidates.
For those who like the sport but know little about it, the book shows you how much there was to soccer before the advent of the Premier League, corporate sponsorship, and 32 teams in the World Cup. Goldblatt does a tremendous job of really digging into the social and political implications and uses of the sport in various countries, from the first world to the third.
Perhaps the most impressive part is that this text is all-inclusive. You don't just get a history of European soccer with a decent bit about South America and occasional mentions or anecdotes from Africa, North America, Australia, or Asia. Goldblatt delves into every continent's history and relationship to the game, truly showing how soccer really is the global game. All in all, this is a fantastic read and I highly recommend it to anyone.The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer Overview

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Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country Review

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Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country ReviewOne might think of William Greider's "Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country" as "Central Banking for Poets." If you've ever scratched your head in wonder when reading how Alan Greenspan and the Fed have "lowered interest rates" or are "easing monetary policy," this book will be extremely enlightening and well worth the time it will take you to plow through all 700 plus pages. If (like me) you majored in economics, you'll be surprised how much better Greider is in explaining arcane economic theory than your college professors (and you'll probably learn -- or re-learn -- quite a bit in the process).
The focal point of the book is the celebrated and controversial tenure of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker (1979-1987), but the mechanics of central banking so clearly and concisely explained are just as much applicable today as in 1980 - or 1950 for that matter.
Greider divides the book into three more-or-less equal thirds. The first covers the inflationary surge of the 1970s, Carter's tenuous decision to appoint Volker, and Volker's radical move of abandoning the control of interest rates in favor of controlling the nation's money supply. (In other words, a shift from the Keynesian orthodoxy dominant in the post-War period in favor of a monetarist approach more in line with the theories of the iconoclastic economist Milton Friedman.) The second, and most informative third provides an historical overview of central banking and its development in the United States. For those solely interested in a better understanding of central banking and the US Federal Reserve in particular, this book will be worth your while even if you only read this middle section. The final third deals with Volker's punishing monetary policy during the early 1980s, as he attempted to destroy lingering anticipation of inflation and the incredibly simulative effects of the Reagan era federal deficits and tax cuts.
Greider is highly critical of Volker's performance as Fed chairman. In short, he argues that far from being the independent and benevolent Shepard of the economy it often claims to be, the Fed, in practice, is beholden to its most powerful constituency: the major money-center financial institutions (i.e. Citibank, Bank of America, etc.). Traditional central bankers view combating inflation as their primary professional objective, which tends to favor creditors at the expense of debtors. Grieder suggests that in waging war on inflation the Fed in effect was waging war on the millions of ordinary Americans struggling to make end meets and keep their heads above water.
Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, Greider's "Secrets of the Temple" is exhaustively researched, expertly written, and extremely enlightening.Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country Overview

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Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (P.S.) Review

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Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (P.S.) ReviewForests have been cleared for all the books that have been written on American History. While a few stand out from the pack, it is harder to find one that is fresh, interesting, and informative. "An Empire of Wealth" is all of those things and I strongly recommend it to you. Instead of being a military, political, or diplomatic history, John Steel Gordon has written an economic biography of our country. Do not mistake this approach for a dry treatise on economics. Far from it, this book is full of struggle, wild success, bitter failure, dislocation from wrenching changes in the economy due to the rise of new technologies, and marshalling resources for war.
He begins with the resource rich, but hostile wilderness that the early explorers found. The British made the first permanent settlement at Jamestown in what is now Virginia. The settlers had come for gold, found mica that they mistook for gold ore, and only 38 of the 105 survived the first winter. They kept coming from England and they kept struggling until they began to grow and export tobacco. Mr. Gordon then takes us on a fast paced, and amazing journey through the nation's founding, the movement west, our major wars, depressions, and the rise (and fall) of technologies such as steam, the railroads, machine supported agriculture, banking, and international trade. He ends the book with the horrible events we experienced on September 11, 2001.
Not only is this a fun read for anyone interested in American History, it would be a fine addition to the history readings for high school or college students. I especially like the author's honesty about the good and the bad in our history without making us the bad guys or the source of all pain and suffering on the planet. The reader comes away with a richer understanding of our history and feels good about our place in the world.
The book has a particularly nice bibliography in addition to the chapter notes. The readings offered in the bibliography would enrich anyone and I also urge you to look at them and read as many as you can. There is also an index to help you find certain topics. (I am a big fan of indexes and cannot understand any modern book without one - given how easily computers can create them and allow the editor to work them into something useful. Yet, we still get books without indexes because people think they will be more popular. What I want is useful!)
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Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up Review

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Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up ReviewThis is a very important book. Many people should read it. All who offer evaluations of how people are faring around the world, and every single politician and policy maker, needs to take its recommendations into consideration. The topic at first seems way too specialized for the general reader: why GDP -- gross domestic product, a monetary figure that claims to sum up all the goods and services produced in a country's economy and has reigned supreme as the most cited economic statistic -- is misleading as a straightforward indicator of human well-being. But this brief book is intended for a wide audience.
"Mismeasuring Our Lives" tells us, in clear, concise and non-technical language why GDP is a problematic measure, what other measurements we should use or develop, and why this is so important for all citizens to understand. The book is the report of a commission called together by French president Nicolas Sarkozy. The lead authors, who convened a broad and distinguished international panel of experts, are the Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, along with Jean-Paul Fitoussi, head of the French center for economic research. They begin by pointing out how much economic activity GDP leaves out, such as the work of a stay-at-home parent or the full benefit of government-provided health care. And GDP can be misleading: rising national output can still leave behind middle and low earners; China, despite authoritarian rule, can appear to be a "better" society than democratic India, if you just look at GDP per capita; France, with more guaranteed vacation time for workers, rates lower than the frenetic U.S.; selling more expensive, gas-guzzling SUVs raises GDP, but at the cost of raising global temperatures and reducing oil reserves.
The report suggests ways to rectify these problems, both using currently available statistics and calling for new measurements. But the commission clearly recognizes that measures of economic performance, particularly the GDP focus on market activity, do not equate to human satisfaction. So they call for a new and extensive move toward better understanding -- and measurement -- of the quality of life. A final third of the book seeks to do the same for sustainability -- how do we improve life for everyone now in such a way that we are not robbing from our children's future? As President Sarkozy points out: "We will not change our behavior unless we change the ways we measure our economic performance."Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up Overview

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The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and HowIt's Transforming the American Economy Review

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The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and HowIt's Transforming the American Economy ReviewWal-Mart, one of the world's largest economies (it accounts for an astounding 2% of the U.S. gross domestic product, and in any given week, 100 million people--half the adult population in the U.S.--shop at Wal-Mart!), has taken it on the chin in recent years. John Dicker's _United States of Wal-Mart_, Bill Quinn's _How Wal-Mart Is Destroying America and the World_, and the recent film "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," are all examples of this trend. Each of them documents Wal-Mart's low wages and benefits, its take-no-prisoners competitiveness that slashes-and-burns local business and guts local main streets, and its willingess to buy sweat-shop goods.
In his _Wal-Mart Effect_, Fishman doesn't deny the pernicious practices of Wal-Mart. But the more interesting feature of his book is his analysis of the culture that Wal-Mart has created in the United States. In a word, Wal-Mart has trained the American consumer to expect and to demand low prices, and to immediately suspect that any commodity that has a higher price tag than its Wal-Mart equivalent must be a rip-off. The Wal-Mart ethos, in other words, has replaced traditional consumer concern for high quality with low cost as the primary criterion.
This replacement of quality with cheapness is troubling enough (think of the environmental effect of buying cheap crap that quickly winds up in a landfill). But Fishman goes on to show that the new culture of low costs means that Wal-Mart must relentlessly scurry to satisfy the customer demands that its practices have created. So Wal-Mart increasingly buys off-shore sweat shop products to keep down prices, and in the process is forcing more and more American wholesellers, already struggling to survive, to shut down their U.S. operations and move overseas where labor and production costs are lower.
Fishman is careful to point out that Wal-Mart really does offer commodities--especially groceries, which Wal-Mart offers about 15% cheaper than its competitors--at lower prices, and this is no small benefit for folks who live on the economic margins (a steadily growing demographic group). But the hidden cost of the low prices is a disturbing cultural and economic transformation: a disregard for quality and the outsourcing of America.
Highly recommended.
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Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff Review

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Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff ReviewLying seems epidemic in American society. Stewart focuses his superb writing skills on the general problem of perjury and lying under oath by highlighting the cases of four celebrated liars: Martha Stewart (no apparent relation to the author), Scooter Libby, Barry Bonds, and Bernie Madoff. For each of these, he asks the same question: "Why would people with so much to lose put so much at risk by lying under oath?" Ultimately, the answer becomes obvious: "They thought they could get away with it."
Stewart uses extensive sources for his own narration. Chief among these are notes from investigations, court proceedings, and personal interviews. Although the book is non-fiction, it's a page-turner, because the machinations of the perpetrators and their victims are suspenseful, ensnaring, and powerfully emotional. Each of the perpetrators would ultimately explain their deceits as motivated by "loyalty," but this seems mostly self-serving and devious. Whatever loyalty they had in mind was to themselves, as all were readily prepared to let underlings and associates take hard falls to cushion their own. In the end, most of the celebrity liars recovered reasonably, with the exception of Madoff who will be in prison for a long time and has lost the love of his family and seen one of his sons commit suicide pursuant to the shame he showered on them.
These continuing losses of Madoff as well as those of Bonds, recently convicted of obstruction of justice, aren't covered in the book which was written in 2010 although published in 2011.
This book has several strengths, and perhaps just one weakness. The strengths are the readable and interesting writing, about larger-than-life "heroes" turned "villains." As he points out, these villains "evidently expect to be admired for this behavior." Meticulously researched and artfully written, the book provides considerable details, easily read and enjoyed. It also addresses a central problem "lying under oath [that] undermines civilization itself."
If the book has a weakness, it would be its failure to look at the bigger picture in order to frame the problem more usefully, to bring it perhaps closer to an appropriate remedy. The bigger problem, in my opinion, is that lying is rampant throughout all of society, not just at the level of criminal investigations and judicial proceedings. While it's true that celebrities routinely lie to protect their wealth and status, the problem seems far more extensive. We have in the US a system rigged for the rich and powerful, whether individuals or corporations, that rewards lying as "business as usual." Why is that? Two reasons, primarily: (1) lying pays and (2) liars are not punished. That might sound hard to believe, if you've not actually investigated it. However, there are few laws against lying, they are usually not enforced, and in many cases--such as politics--the Supreme Court protects liars. The Court has ruled that politicians can routinely lie and broadcasters must be willing (if they are not already eager) to sell to the liars and their campaign organizations advertising time to carry those lies to as many people as they can possibly infect.
So, when Stewart suggests that fixing this problem "requires a capacity for moral outrage," he's right, but as a remedy that prescription falls far short. To bring the epidemic under control, we are going to need to invent and employ new solutions. For example, Snopes on the Web publicizes some lies ("urban myths") and many people check Snopes before they pass lies along. PolitiFact and FactCheck, two other Web sites, investigate political lies and policy lies. New products such as Wolfram Alpha, StateOfTheUSA, and numerous regional indicators projects aim to provide curated and reliable answers to important questions. Wikipedia enables many people to edit and polish statements, hopefully bringing them rapidly to a state of truth. A new organization, TruthSeal.org, offers means for people and organizations to affix seals of truth to their vetted claims and to offer bounties for people to present falsifying evidence. In these and other ways, we might create stronger incentives for truth telling and stimulate social networks of people to ferret out lies in the public information commons. By changing the incentives, rewarding truth tellers and punishing liars, we could hope to begin to change the course of this rampant social disease.
Without some change to the rules of the game, we should continue to expect the same outcomes, over and over.
In fairness to Stewart, he wanted to tell a compelling story and get people thinking seriously about how our society encourages obviously sociopathic behavior. He does that extremely well. Another book will be required to look at the bigger, more general problem, consider the situation from a problem-solving point of view, and lay out the best courses of action for implementing remedies. Readers who might be interested in my own study of that problem and proposed recovery plan should consider TRUTHINESS FEVER: How Lies and Propaganda are Poisoning Us and a Ten-Step Program for Recovery.Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff Overview

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America's Bubble Economy: Profit When It Pops Review

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America's Bubble Economy: Profit When It Pops ReviewYou can give this book a pass. There's really nothing to it, so save your money. While one might agree wholeheartedly with its premise and conclusions, the exposition here is not the best. For comparison, take a look at Stephen Leeb's Chapter 5 in his "Oil Factor" of 2004 and you will see a much cleaner more informative discussion of just about everything in the "Bubble" book. Leeb is far more succinct and authoritative and manages to avoid what is becoming the most overused word in the language -- "bubble." And he does it in 11 pages.
The investment advice in this book, once you get past all the padding, is to buy gold and euros. The advice on gold at least comes with a cursory analysis of the supply and demand situation, but the advice on the euro is given without support. There's no discussion whatsoever of the economic realities facing the European Union and how they might impact the dollar/euro exchange rates. I'm not saying there isn't a good reason to run to euros, just that it appears nowhere in this book.
One of the other reviewers was as annoyed as I was about the poor editing in this book. In addition to misspelling Warren Buffett's name numerous times, including in the index, there is a general carelessness that made reading each chapter a hunt for mistakes. I expect more from Wiley.
If this is your first exposure to discussion of the multiple problems facing our economy from housing prices, government debt, consumer debt, and foreign exchange risks, it may serve as a readable introduction. However, don't expect too much depth and be prepared for typos and misspellings. A two star rating is pretty generous.America's Bubble Economy: Profit When It Pops Overview

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The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America Review

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The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America ReviewAuthor Joshua Holland comes out swinging against the rhetoric and arguments that conservatives and Republicans have been inundating media and blogs with, in the past several years about the future and stability of our economy.
Holland takes fifteen topics, topics on taxes, jobs, corporations, free trade, illegal immigration, unions, healthcare, the deficit, minorities, and socialism, to name a few, and demolishes their arguments and charges that Republicans misinform the public to instill fear in the electorate.
For years, Republicans and conservatives have turned their message into an art form of slogans and falsehoods that do not stand scrutiny when Holland gives you the analysis, the stats, or the historical reality behind each of them.
Holland's prose is somewhere between strident and measured, but lucid and factual. He offers percentages and charts that are easy to follow and do not bore. He demonstrates clearly how corporations and lobbyists control the message and determine everything from legislation to trade agreements.
This is for the avid observer of the political struggle that is currently raging in this country. This is especially informative for the person whose political awareness is just germinating. The very well informed may wish to read this to recall things momentarily forgotten.
It is an alarming story and a depressing one. It is the story of our country being owned by the entities just described, how legislators do the bidding of their contributors rather than citizens, how our government does more to protect business than consumers.
What was just as important is what Holland didn't say. He was describing the slow strangulation of the death of a republic that was bought through avarice and greed with a powerful message of fear, and the perversion of a dream that belonged to our Founding Fathers.
I can give you fifteen reason why you might want to read this.
I also recommend the following:
The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and StickYou with the Bill)
Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane
Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else
The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity'and What We Can Do About It
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Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk Review

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Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk ReviewAgainst the Gods is an outstanding book about the evolution of risk and man's attempt to understand it. Bernstein begins with ancient times and traces the history of numbers and probability leading eventually to today's seemingly complex financial world of portfolio theory, derivatives, and risk management techniques. Readers will learn about revolutionary thinkers including John von Neumann (inventor of game theory), Isaac Newton, Harry Markowitz (grandfather of portfolio theory), and the late Fischer Black (Black Scholes option formula) among others. Readers will also find enlightening stories about game theory, fibonacci numbers, chaos theory, the bell curve, regression to the mean, and more. Yet despite all the intelligence, computer power, and sophisticated techniques, Bernstein presents us with the growing body of evidence discovered by researchers including the late Amos Tversky and others that "reveals repeated patterns of irrationality, inconsistency, and incompetence in the ways human beings arrive at decisions and choices when faced with uncertainty." Against the Gods was chosen as one of Business Week's top 10 books of the year for 1996.Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk Overview

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Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won Review

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Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won ReviewI greatly enjoyed Moskowitz and Wertheim's Scorecasting. Much like the highly successful Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.), the authors examine some of the preconceptions surrounding sport, using statistics and other empirical evidence to reach some interesting conclusions. As the authors stated in their forward, they hope this book will be used to start conversations, settle bar bets, and generally entertain the thinking sportsman. I think they have succeeded.
By and large, Scorecasting is highly readable. My one critique would be that the chapters a highly variable in length, and in particular some of the shorter chapters seemed to be just tossed in. (Did we really need 4 pages to show that, indeed, the Yankees win because they have the biggest payroll in baseball? Three pages to show that the coin toss at the start of NFL overtime is important?) I would also point out that, again like Freakonomics, the chapters are unconnected by any underlying theme, unless that theme is to examine preconceptions and use evidence. I don't consider that a flaw, more a notation of what type of book this is.
In addition, I was reminded of my favorite sports book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Just as a large part of Moneyball was devoted to showing how a systematic statistical approach to building a team could lead to better results than traditional scouting, Scorecasting can give a reader an appreciation of some recurring trends in sport. It is not just descriptive, but predictive. (The one thing that sets Moneyball apart is that is also has the very compelling story of Oakland A's manager Billy Beane woven in. That human element is absent in Scorecasting.)
Some quick examples from chapters I enjoyed:
Why you should (almost) never punt in football, including an example of a coach who followed the philosophy to a state title. Also, why most coaches still punt, in spite of the evidence.
Why Tim Duncan's 149 blocked shots are more valuable than Dwight Howard's 232 (Answer: Duncan tends to block the ball to his teammates, Howard tends toward the spectacular swat that goes into the 4th row...then back to the other team.)
The incredible differences in strike zones when comparing a 3-0 count to a 0-2 count. (Hint: umps expand the zone in the former, shrink the zone in the latter, allowing the hitter to determine the outcome)
So, if you are a sports fan, a bit of a stats geek, and enjoy a well thought out contrarian argument, this is a 5 star book. If you generally enjoyed the other two books I mentioned, I think this would be a good choice.
4.5 stars overall
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The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World (Little Books. Big Profits) Review

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The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World (Little Books. Big Profits) ReviewGreg Ip's Little Book of Economics frames current economic issues in an
easy to read and understandable fashion. It combines economic theory
with real world conditions. Ip provides context to the credit market
crisis, the Great Recession, and to the painfully high unemployment of
recent years. The book also explains in a non-technical fashion the role
of the Federal Reserve, the factors that are considered in the
formulation of policy, and the many unconventional policies of the
Federal Reserve employed during the crisis. I have assigned this book to
my Money & Banking class at Rutgers as a complement to the regular text.
Feedback from the students has been uniformly favorable. I strongly
recommend The Little book of Economics for those with an interest in
connecting the dots between theory and practice, for students who
are looking for purpose in economic theory, and for the more general
reader looking for the forest beyond the financial news trees.
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The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future Review

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The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future ReviewOther reviewers have summarized the book in detail, so I won't. I'll just emphasize the bottom line:
Machines are fast approaching humans in terms of *mental* labor capacity, not just *physical* labor capacity. In the past as machines took over much of our physical labor, we were then free to turn to more valuable mental labor. But once machines take over much of our mental labor, then what do we turn to for employment?
The author makes a very compelling case that this situation will arise, and likely within the next few decades. And he also lays out some rather bold suggestions to delay the shock of the resulting high unemployment and allow us to transition to an inevitably new type of economy as smoothly as possible. Though, even with these suggestions, I expect this transition is not likely to be smooth.
This book is a very important, frank discussion of a pending time-bomb for our precious mass market economy. Read it and recommend it to others. And think about how you and your family and friends will manage the forthcoming transition.The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future Overview

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Rich Dad's Advisors: Guide to Investing In Gold and Silver: Protect Your Financial Future Review

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Rich Dad's Advisors: Guide to Investing In Gold and Silver: Protect Your Financial Future ReviewMike has made a compelling case that sooner, rather than later, the US Dollar is going to tank and everyone will be running to gold and silver to protect their wealth. The good news is that NOW is the time to get in on both silver and gold- before the HERD of people start rushing in. Mike states that this opportunity coming could be the best investment in history.
The book starts off with the history of other empires that have used a fiat currency and how they have failed 100% of the time. The United States has been on this path since Aug, 1971 when President Nixon took us off the gold standard. There are a lot of interesting facts in this book but not too many to bore the reader. He explains that gold and silver will revalue themselves periodically in relation to the amount of paper currency printed. For example, the M3 money supply (total printed money in circulation) was ~$1.7 billion in January, 1980 when gold hit $850 an ounce. Today, the M3 is estimated at $14 trillion, a 7.7 times increase in the amount of currency. With that said, gold, when it adjusts, should be $6,118.00 an ounce...
Mike goes into today's current economic climate, then predictions for "tomorrow". He concludes with the final section "How to Invest in Precious Metals".
I recommend this book if you are unsure about silver and gold relating to investing. There's so much documentation and research behind it.
I've never read an investment book with this much passion put into it!!!Rich Dad's Advisors: Guide to Investing In Gold and Silver: Protect Your Financial Future Overview

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Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown Review

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Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown ReviewIf you would like to visit the author's website, hire them to financially advise you, or simply buy their friend's books, then you'll have plenty of opportunities during this read. Shameless plugs and weblinks are littered throughout so many of these pages you'll probably catch yourself laughing in spite of it all.
And seriously, I have never encountered a more pretentious self-congratulatory pat-themselves-on-the-back-and-then-do-it-again group of authors in my life. Ever. It's tolerable at first, annoying next, unbelievable, and finally comical. Is it entertaining? Oh ok, you'll finally be entertained by their level of arrogance... but probably because you suspect these guys (and gal) don't even realize it.
Their message is simple and never approaches the more erudite levels of their contemporaries. They even complain about their failure at publishing in peer reviewed journals at one point. More sour grapes appear when they devote a huge section of the book (probably about 35%) to attacking practically every economist in the known world. At least they explicitly reveal to the reader exactly where each economist makes their mistake and how they should proceed down the path of redemption. Hell, they even take on the entire SCIENCE of economics at one point.
It's a fun read though and I enjoyed it. It's a serious topic and these guys are probably pretty damn close to predicting what will happen in the next few years despite their sophomoric approach. Go ahead and buy it if you are interested, but in case the Aftershock has already left you penniless, here's the summary:
The U.S. will hit their credit limit when foreign entities quit buying our T-bills. The Fed will continue to buy bonds to manipulate the market, massive inflation will occur, so you better have stocked up on gold because nothing else will protect you.
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