Books

Packer’s Last Best Hope: America in crisis and renewal (Ferrar, Straus & Giroux 2021) has aroused quite a bit of attention and comment in the media. At the heart of the book is Packer’s description of four Americas: Free America, Real America, Smart America, and Just America. The writing is --->> read more -->>

Kristof and WuDunn’s book, Tightrope – Americans Reaching for Hope, spent some weeks on bestseller lists. Kristof is a well known reporter and writer for the NYTimes. It centers around the town of Yamhill OR and the people that Kristof grew up among. The stories of industrial decline, increasing inequality, --->> read more -->>

 An American Sickness: how healthcare became big business and how you can take it back by Elisabeth Rosenthal (Penguin Press, 2017) is both important and disappointing. Part I: History of the Present Illness and Review of Systems The first 238 pages are a comprehensive review of the machinery of our --->> read more -->>

Affirmative Action For Whites – began in the 1930s As noted here in “Creating Segregated America in the 20th Century – government in action” segregated America didn’t happen by chance nor by choice of the victims. Consistent white supremacist government action supported by private institutions created the segregation that persists --->> read more -->>

Creating Segregated America in the 20th Century – Government in Action Today, more than 50 years after the much lauded 1960s era Civil Rights Acts legislated the end of segregation in housing and education, this country is as segregated as ever. The official explanation is that this is de facto --->> read more -->>

It is doubtless a fact that most Northerners, including the writer, think that slavery in America was a Southern problem. In the North slavery was an occasional institution, or so we think. A week ago on Thursday 6/8/17 I attended a program at the library, “Abolition and Women’s Rights in --->> read more -->>

Jacob S. Hacker, Yale professor and author of many books and article critiquing the American political system, economy, and the fate of the poor and middle classes, reviewed a new book, AN AMERICAN SICKNESS: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal (NY: Penguin Press, --->> read more -->>

The title of this short book, only 130 pages, Building the New American Economy: smart, fair, & sustainable by Jeffrey D. Sachs with a foreword by Bernie Sanders (Columbia University Press, 2017) is unfortunately misleading. There is much here about the new economy. The misleading part is that there is --->> read more -->>

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: the US standard of living since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon is a weighty book in every regard. At 762 pages it is a heavy lift – not beach reading or even bed-time either. But I found it almost a page turner. --->> read more -->>

We are within days of the anniversary of the first revelations from Edward Snowden’s archive of NSA documents. The drum beat of new stories emerging from this trove continues even to this moment. So, Glenn Greenwald’s book, No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State --->> read more -->>

The new book, Flash Boys, by Michael Lewis has reignited the discussion of how our financial markets are rigged by high frequency trading. From my 2012 note:  To turn back to HFTs, why do we need this kind of transaction? How do they contribute to economic growth? These activities are --->> read more -->>