A breezy overview of Chinese spending habits that predicts a rosy future for the world’s fastest-growing economy.
A commentary on the cash economy of China that intersperses economic discussions with personal asides from Cavolo’s (Catalysts to Change, 2013) experiences living and working in the Far East country.
Despite this book’s provocative title, the author’s central argument focuses on less of a lie than a secret: how Chinese daily spending and saving habits contribute to a sturdier economy than state-provided numbers reveal. At the outset, he notes a discrepancy between citizens’ income and spending patterns, concluding that the bulk of the Chinese economy must be based on cash—specifically, a vast pool of up to $10 trillion in “unknown, uncounted, off-the-books cash” held by its citizens. He notes that Chinese frugality provides a practical approach for a system dependent on an unregulated “gray market” for buying and selling goods. He delves into the daily minutiae of the Chinese middle class, projecting a street-cart hawker’s savings in the six figures, based on his extremely low-cost but high-volume production. Cavolo never doubts that the juggernaut Chinese economy will continue barreling along because of this burgeoning middle class, and he provides relevant statistical bullet points, such as the projected number of shopping malls in China over the next decade and the mounting revenue from foreign-movie ticket sales. The book also includes several companionable anecdotes about daily life in China’s industrial cities, ranging from a few short paragraphs to long, interwoven supplements to the author’s larger economic analysis. One particularly enlightening chapter uses nine examples of everyday Chinese people to examine the macroeconomic forces at play; he also ties their actions to aspects of Chinese culture, such as the use of cash “commissions” to maintain business relationships. He turns away from narrative-based analysis for the second half of the book, which draws on articles he wrote that were published on the website of investment adviser Rick Ackerman. There are some imaginative conceits (such as a fictitious diary entry of a typical Chinese middle manager), but much of what the author discusses in the book’s first half is reiterated here, as he gets the last word in disagreements with a wide range of skeptical economic forecasters.
A breezy overview of Chinese spending habits that predicts a rosy future for the world’s fastest-growing economy.Pub Date: May 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-1592651641
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Long River Press
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 Yorker staff 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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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