Third World America

I’m going to begin this review with a digression. Let’s talk about Arianna Huffington. Despite the fact that her name (and online journalism) has been around for a while, I unintentionally managed to go a long time without hearing anything she said or reading anything she wrote. I vaguely knew that she was similar to me on the political spectrum (if a bit more liberal) and assumed that I would enjoy her book.

And then I saw her on Conan. In the interview, she was asked why she owns three blackberries. Hold it, I thought, What does any one person need with three blackberries. One blackberry? Completely reasonable. Two blackberries? Silly, but understandable if you needed to talk and browse the internet at the same time. Three? Terribly excessive! Is it even possible to use three blackberries? I was actually interested to hear how she justified her ownership. But what did she respond with? Some story about how she fainted, tried to cut back her blackberry use to only two (because they caused her fainting?), but was now back to using three. In other words, no real answer.

Ever since I saw that interview in December, I can’t stop thinking about the ridiculousness of owning three blackberries, and, slowly, I have become more and more angry with Huffington for her ownership. Here she is, in theory a champion for the lower and middle class, and she owns three blackberries. I’m not saying that if you have money you should donate it all and never buy yourself nice things. What I’m saying is that maybe you shouldn’t have three of the exact same nice thing.

So, now for the review. As you can gather, I didn’t go into the book with the best opinion of the author. However, I assumed she would be a good writer (considering the fact that her career is based on it) and thought the book wouldn’t be so bad. Turns out, it was a false assumption, but more on that later.

In Third World America: How our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream, Huffington presents a cavalcade of depressing facts about the state of America, making the point that if we don’t make some big changes, the country will lose its status as a world leader and, indeed, a first-world country. The book is split into five sections, each finishing with first-hand accounts from suffering, formerly middle class Americans. The final section provides actions America needs to take to avoid its great decline.

Politically, I should have felt myself agreeing with the points Huffington made. I should have read what she wrote and been spurred to action. Instead, because it was written in such an abrasive, accusatory matter, I found myself reacting defensively, thinking “She’s being too harsh. It’s not really that bad.” (Even though, chances are good that for many people, it is). Couple the accusatory tone with a glut of weak and clichéd metaphors, awful puns, and out-of-place pop culture references, and you’re left with an unpleasant reading experience.

The final section of the book, where Huffington presents potential solutions, was the best part, though I would have liked to have more actions individuals can take, and fewer proposals of large (and unrealistic) overhauls.

Despite my many complaints, I’m giving Third World America a 2/5. It did present interesting facts about America’s current state, and had I not been so anti-Huffington prior to reading, I may have cut the book more slack.

Watch Jon Stewart's interview with Arianna Huffington

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The Big Short

As you may have already realized, I’m tired of reading books about the economy. Because of that, I know I didn’t approach Michael Lewis’s book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, with the most open mind, and therefore, this may not be the fairest of reviews. Another thing not working in The Big Short’s favor is that I listened to the audio version of the book, and the narrator wasn’t super. The waitlist on the book was very long, but no one had checked out the book on CD, so I opted for that. One good thing came out of the long waitlist, though, and so I will further delay beginning this review to tell you the story.

Early this summer, I was working behind the circ desk at the Chelsea District Library, and a patron came to pick up a book he had on hold. The book happened to be The Big Short, so I mentioned that I was on the waitlist for that book as well.
A few days later, this gentleman returned to the library and said, “I’ve read about 50 pages of Lewis’s book, and boy is it a good one. Have you read the one Harry Markopolos just wrote?”
Sure enough, I had just picked up No One Would Listen that morning. “I just started it.”
“Well, if you like Harry, you’ll like this one. They’re both ruthless.”
Now, each time this man comes into the library, he’ll tell me about the latest book he’s reading about the economy and gives me his opinion on whether it’s worth reading. Even though I know I’ll probably never read one of the books he tells me about, I love having those interactions over the circulation desk. Because of my Daily Shill mission, I’m connecting with a patron that I wouldn’t have otherwise. And I’m glad for that.

And now, for the review.

The Big Short isn’t as bad as I may have made it sound. In it, he follows the financial moves of the handful of men who realized that the CDO market was doomed to fail. These investors and hedge fund managers purchased cheap insurance on these CDOs and ended up making tons of money.

Lewis candidly writes about these men. His stories of them are filled with direct quotes, and he doesn’t fill the book with technical talk that only economists could understand. I liked how he focuses on particular investors, which gives the reader characters to follow throughout the book. If it were the first book I’d read on the economic slump of 2008, I bet I’d have remained interested. Instead, though, I found myself losing focus. Rather than listening to the book over a short time span, I ended up listening to a disc here and there over the past 3 months.

But, even though it’s not going to be a fair one, I need to give The Big Short a rating. It gets a 3/5 because even though it bored me, I could see its merits. If you want to read a book about the economy, it’s probably a good choice.

Watch Jon Stewart’s interview with Michael Lewis

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Comeback America

David Walker’s book, Comeback America, is filled with doom and gloom about our country’s economic state. He paints a rough picture of the pile of debt and the “borrowing is okay” mindset America has. Though he provides some potential solutions, the brunt of Walker’s focus is on the problems facing our nation.

Comeback America centers on irresponsible government spending, with special emphasis on social security, health care, and the pentagon. Walker’s credentials on this topic are high – he’s US Comptroller general and head of the Government Accountability Office. He has a genuine interest in our country’s fiscal responsibility, and he fills the book with appalling statistics (such as, if America’s debt was divided over the number of households in the country, each one would owe $483,000). Walker also avoids aligning himself with a political party throughout the book: he was a fan of Bush Senior and Clinton’s economic policies, upset with Bush Junior’s, and hopeful, but worried, about Obama’s.

As I was reading Comeback America, I knew what I was learning was important, but despite my efforts to engage, I was mostly bored with it. Walker’s writing is clear, but not particularly inspiring. Walker often gives speeches dealing with the same issues Comeback America does, and I would’ve rather heard him speak on them: his passion for the subject likely comes across better in speech than in type.

It’s difficult for me to settle on a fair rating for this book. Comeback America is not what I’d call an enjoyable read—something that is actually acknowledged by the author in the epilogue of the book—but I did learn a lot, and it’s made me think about the problem of excessive spending and how to deal with it. I give it a 3/5, but know what you’re getting into if you pick it up.

Watch Jon Stewart’s interview with David Walker

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The Quants

Math and Wall Street: two subjects I know very little about. They also happen to be the subjects of Scott Patterson’s book The Quants. The Quants follows the professional lives (and a tad of the personal sides) of math geniuses that used their knowledge to develop trading strategies on Wall Street. These strategies made the Quants (the collective name for these math whizzes) oodles of money—that is, until they led to the near collapse of the market.

Patterson, a reporter for the Wall Street journal, writes like a journalist (no surprises there), saying what happened without attaching much commentary. His writing is clear and straightforward, which is a good thing because, despite having taken Econ 101 last term, I was confused by a lot of the economic stuff. Patterson did explain various theories and processes, and I probably could have understood The Quants better if I had taken the time to think about his explanations and taken notes to reference when the theories came up again. But I didn’t. So I spent a decent amount of time not really understanding what I was reading.

Another confusing aspect of the book was keeping track of the vast number of Quants that Patterson chronicled. It was easy to mix the different men up, even though a list of “the players” was given at the beginning of the book.

All things considered, I give The Quants a 3/5. It was a well written book, but one that sometimes bored and confused me due to my lack of prior knowledge. However, I would definitely recommend it to my econ major friends (yes, all three of you) or to anyone who wants to have more insight on how the United States got into our current economic state.

Watch Jon Stewart’s interview with Scott Patterson

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And now, I must share two things that don’t really belong in a review, but have to do with The Quants. First, the author shares a name with an actor. On the three days that led up to the Daily Show interview, the Daily Show’s website promoted the interview with a picture of the actor, rather than one of the author (it was fixed the day of the interview). I love to imagine the person in charge of finding a photography thinking, “Who knew that Scott Patterson of Gilmore Girls fame knew so much about the economy? ”

Secondly, at one point in his book, Patterson was describing the lavish wedding of one of the Quants. He used the sentence “Guests dangled from helium balloons” and did not go on to explain it. How is that possible? Don’t you want to dangle from helium balloons at every wedding you go to?

Rediscovering Values

Guess what. Turns out the book I read was called Rediscovering Values, not Comeback America (though it is by Jim Wallis). Since I got the book through interlibrary loans (a wonderful service that allows libraries across the county--and world-- to share books with each other) there was a piece of paper with loan info over the cover and I didn't read the title. But how I managed to think it was Comeback America despite it being a book all about rediscovering values is a mystery.

But anyway, Jim Wallis is a well-known preacher (though I hadn't heard of him before this challenge) and his book, as you may guess from the title, is about how Americans need to rediscover values. More specifically, he talks about how Wall Street's poor values (such as greed) helped to lead us into our current economic state, and how, rather than returning to normal when the economy improves, we should all re-evaluate our lives and what we see as most important.

I was wary about picking up a book written by a prominent preacher. I did not want to be preached at. And though each chapter of Wallis's book could be interpreted as individual sermons (mixing stories of the economy with stories from the bible and stories from ordinary people's lives), and though he certainly instructed readers on things they should be doing, he didn't proselytize. Though that could have been because the book seemed aimed at a religious audience, I like to think it's because Wallis wanted his book to be inclusive.

The feeling I got most out of reading Rediscovering Values was that I'd like to have a conversation with Wallis. He seemed like a genuine, good guy and someone, who despite having some views contrary to my own, would have a respectful dialogue about any issue. I suppose you could call Rediscovering Values one side of a potential conversation.

As a whole, Wallis is a fine writer, not super, not terrible (though he did repeat himself a bit). But I didn't get the sense that he was aiming to write beautiful sentences: instead he wanted to get his ideas across. Also, he had a lot of interesting facts peppered throughout the book, wrote a chapter on Detroit, and spent a few pages discussing Jon Stewart's interview with Jim Cramer (which you can watch here). So I give the book a 3/5. If I were asked for a book recommendation, it probably wouldn't come up, but I definitely wouldn't dissuade you from picking it up.

Watch Jon Stewart's interview with Jim Wallis.

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