by Andrew Stevenson ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A wicked and witty work.
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A sardonic spoof of business books that lambasts the superrich.
In this cleverly structured, darkly humorous book, portfolio manager/investment banker Stevenson (Cynicism, 2016) writes from a first-person perspective, as if he’s a billionaire candidly revealing his worldview. The resulting mock “handbook” begins with an overview of what he calls “The Old Rules.” In it, the narrator breaks economic history into three main periods: Mercantilism, Capitalism, and Cynicism—the latter of which, he says, is the “new economic system” that has replaced capitalism. Thirty “New Rules” of the post-capitalistic economy follow, each of which Stevenson outlines in biting, satirical text. For example, Rule 15 says that “a CEO’s value is measured by how much of their company’s cash they can get away with transferring into my bank account,” while Rule 22 proclaims, “if you pay someone enough you can always get the answer you are looking for.” Each of the rules, just a few paragraphs long, follows a similarly humorous path. The second part of the book is even darker in tone, as the narrator claims that the 2008 financial meltdown allowed billionaires to tap into “newfound fear and anxiety”: “Then we elected one of our own the President of the United States, and before you knew it, we were right back on track.” (An accompanying illustration shows a Donald Trump–like figure on a throne.) The narrator then proceeds to deliver 25 more rules that take aim at current issues and beliefs with uproarious cynicism. The author addresses health care, immigration, “fake news,” and other topics, depicting billionaires as narcissistic, hardhearted, and morally corrupt. One rule, for instance, advises that “empathy is the enemy of ‘the people’ and by ‘the people’ I mean rich people,” while another observes that “a shrinking middle class is great for lowering your company’s wage bills.” The book’s closing section, “A Few Years Later,” offers readers a novel contrast; in it, the billionaire narrator has retired and has decided that he’d like to be remembered as “The Greatest American of the 21st Century.” The 20 rules that he puts forth at this point reflect the actions of a more compassionate, philanthropic, and socially conscious person; ironically, however, he offers these rules solely in a personal bid for immortality. Overall, there are several elements that make this parody stand out. The voice of the narrator, for one, is spot-on, brilliantly portraying a self-involved and exceedingly callous caricature of a modern-day magnate. Despite occasional grammatical errors, the text is consistently cunning and merciless, and it’s made all the more effective by the inclusion of vibrant, colorful illustrations that cleverly reinforce the content throughout. The last section of the book shrewdly presents what American society could possibly be like if the people in it followed moral tenets of justice and fair play. Overall, this is a tour de farce that offers an unrelentingly amoral, profit-driven characterization of a billionaire, and as with all potent satires, the author’s words hit the mark more often than not.
A wicked and witty work.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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written and illustrated by Andrew Stevenson
by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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SEEN & HEARD
by Truman Capote ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 7, 1965
"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that." This is Perry Edward Smith, talking about himself. "Deal me out, baby...I'm a normal." This is Richard Eugene Hickock, talking about himself. They're as sick a pair as Leopold and Loeb and together they killed a mother, a father, a pretty 17-year-old and her brother, none of whom they'd seen before, in cold blood. A couple of days before they had bought a 100 foot rope to garrote them—enough for ten people if necessary. This small pogrom took place in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome town on a flat, limitless landscape: a depot, a store, a cafe, two filling stations, 270 inhabitants. The natives refer to it as "out there." It occurred in 1959 and Capote has spent five years, almost all of the time which has since elapsed, in following up this crime which made no sense, had no motive, left few clues—just a footprint and a remembered conversation. Capote's alternating dossier Shifts from the victims, the Clutter family, to the boy who had loved Nancy Clutter, and her best friend, to the neighbors, and to the recently paroled perpetrators: Perry, with a stunted child's legs and a changeling's face, and Dick, who had one squinting eye but a "smile that works." They had been cellmates at the Kansas State Penitentiary where another prisoner had told them about the Clutters—he'd hired out once on Mr. Clutter's farm and thought that Mr. Clutter was perhaps rich. And this is the lead which finally broke the case after Perry and Dick had drifted down to Mexico, back to the midwest, been seen in Kansas City, and were finally picked up in Las Vegas. The last, even more terrible chapters, deal with their confessions, the law man who wanted to see them hanged, back to back, the trial begun in 1960, the post-ponements of the execution, and finally the walk to "The Corner" and Perry's soft-spoken words—"It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize." It's a magnificent job—this American tragedy—with the incomparable Capote touches throughout. There may never have been a perfect crime, but if there ever has been a perfect reconstruction of one, surely this must be it.
Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1965
ISBN: 0375507906
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1965
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