As various challenges confront nations around the world, Stonebarger offers his personal take on our society’s past, present and future, focusing on the intersection of the economic, political and cultural.
Stonebarger’s major assertion is that the most successful, everlasting system in our global history is what he terms “free-market liberal democracy,” which, going forward, will bring worldwide prosperity if and when more nations adopt the system for themselves. He breaks down free-market liberal democracy into three tenets—capitalism, (humanistic) religion and science and technology. As he explores these three pillars, the author compares each to what he believes are their biggest threats—communistic ideology and politics, radical Islam and radical environmentalism (problematic, he asserts, because it includes some extreme adherents who insist society revert to a simpler life in order to avoid global ecological catastrophe as well as counsel against certain pathways of innovation). A common thread throughout the book is the distinction between “win-win” and “zero-sum” transactions, wherein the former benefits both parties, while the latter only benefits one. Stonebarger concludes, perhaps a bit too idealistically, that free-market liberal democracy is a win-win structure that ensures a free, capitalistic, compassionate and healthy society. The author’s conversational tone and style lends itself well to his topic. The book could be improved by an analytically tighter, more reasoned thesis, as competing—stretching, at times head-achingly, into contradictory—conclusions often appear. A stronger execution would cut down on repetition and allow for an overall more engaging narrative arc. It is quite surprising, given the subject, that there is little discussion of the current state of financial affairs in the United States and abroad; Stonebarger’s perspective, as someone who has lived through several major historical events since the Great Depression, allows him the opportunity to make firsthand observations and possibly clarify his premise and positions through real-world contexts. A treatise uniquely suited for an ideologically and politically likeminded audience, though oddly out of touch with recent game-changing global events.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1559791953
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Gilman Street
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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