Sizzling good stuff such as this, though sometimes buried in detail, will keep many readers moving along through Andrew’s...
A sordid tale of the abuse of presidential power by Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, an abuse enthusiastically enabled by snooping accountants.
It’s not news, exactly, that the Internal Revenue Service has been asked or ordered to do things beyond the strict terms of its mandate. It’s not news that the IRS has been enthusiastic in expanding its powers and reluctant to account for its activities. Andrew’s contribution in this too long, too slow narrative—cobbled from drafts the late Franklin & Marshall College historian (Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, not reviewed) left behind—is to examine just how systematic the use of the federal tax authority for political (and sometimes personal) reasons has been. Though Kennedy was not the first president to do so, he and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, made widespread use of the IRS in targeting dissident organizations and individuals, many on the extreme right—and for good reason, given that Kennedy, Andrew asserts, had received 34 death threats from right-wingers in Texas in early 1961 alone. Lyndon Johnson expanded the Kennedy IRS’s Ideological Organizations Project to embrace proto-Christian right ventures, such as billionaire H.L. Hunt’s Life Line Foundation and, with the help of intelligence agencies, the antiwar left. But, Andrew shows, it was Richard Nixon who perfected the use of the tax agency as an instrument of political suppression, fulfilling Chief Justice John Marshall’s observation that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Nixon’s infamous enemies list became an agenda of sorts for the IRS’s since-disbanded Special Service Staff, but the president’s zeal for catching one archenemy, Democratic National Committee chairman Lawrence O’Brien, had unintended consequences; the IRS’s investigations, Andrew writes, brought up uncomfortable evidence of Nixon’s own involvement with “an array of underworld characters and mobsters”—and, Andrew adds, led directly to the Watergate burglary.
Sizzling good stuff such as this, though sometimes buried in detail, will keep many readers moving along through Andrew’s pages. Could it all happen again? Bet on it.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2002
ISBN: 1-56663-452-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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