Thought-provoking new views on transforming our relationships with currency.
How one man changed his views about money.
Tired of spending more time than he wanted in pursuit of money, Hewitt (The Town that Food Saved, 2010, etc.) decided to investigate why so many hours are used on this seemingly endless cycle. That's when he discovered Erik Gillard, a man surviving, even thriving, below the poverty level, perfectly content living simply in a small town in Vermont. Sure, he had no cellphone, computer, iPod or iPad. He borrowed vehicles and lived in a less-than-100-square-foot house, with no electricity or running water. And yet, Hewitt was intrigued because Gillard was happy, had plenty of friends, a job, a girlfriend and strong ties within the community. He also had time to spend the day hunting for morels or skiing through the woods—time to just be. Blending pleasing prose about his natural surroundings with an in-depth and understandable analysis of the American monetary and economic systems, Hewitt provides readers much food for thought. The need for things has created environmental problems around the world, and society has become consumer-oriented with tangible objects—such as a house or car, purchased with paper and plastic—items that only hold value because of the faith placed in them. "I find myself working more to earn for no other reason than to accumulate,” he writes, “to strengthen my so-called safety net, even as doing so pulls me out of the flow of my life and into the choppy current of money." What does it really matter when all is said and done? "The manner in which you pass your time is the manner in which you pass your life,” he writes. "How, then, do you want to live?"
Thought-provoking new views on transforming our relationships with currency.Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60961-408-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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