A damp but thoroughgoing and often illuminating chronicle of competing economic theories from the 1960's through the early 1990's, by veteran Wall Street Journal economics editor Malabre (Within Our Means, 1990, etc.). Malabre offers a chronicle of a profession in increasing disarray. From the sedate confidence of die-hard 1960's Keynesians such as Paul Samuelson, an advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, through the growth of the influential, self-promoting group of monetarists led by Milton Friedman in the 1970's, to supply-siders such as Arthur B. Laffer under Reagan, Malabre argues that economists' ability to predict—let alone control—the course of American business activity has steadily deteriorated even as economists have grown in number and stature. Measured by the ability to forecast employment, profits, growth, inflation, and recession—or the effect of floating exchange rates, tax policy, deficit spending, or the money supply on any of the above—Arthur Burns beats Alan Greenspan every time. Much technical analysis of post-WW II economic trends (for example, monitoring the effects on currencies and international trade of the abandonment in 1971 of the Bretton Woods agreement on fixed exchange rates) fills out the author's report, leavened by amusing tales from his long acquaintance with economists of every stripe (at one point, Malabre runs into a Federal Reserve Bank governor in a London topless bar). Malabre ends by resuscitating the theory of the business cycle: For serious readers. (First printing of 20,000)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-87594-441-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
A fascinating and vital, if lopsided, record of an important conflict in British military history.
Intimidatingly researched, Kenney’s absorbing account of the Falklands War’s iconic Battle of Goose Green manages the weight of its subject with sobriety and pathos, if not consistent objectivity.
Twenty-five years after the Falklands War, Kenney’s meticulous rendering of this strategically pointless battle illuminates with minute detail the hows, wheres and whos, if not the whys, of a war that most historians agree should not have occurred. The author’s passion for the subject is palpable, and his factual legwork impressive. Gathering a broad array of sources, Kenney determinedly sets the stage for the central conflict between Thatcher-era Britain and junta-led Argentina. The account begins with past Falklands conflicts, trots out the major players and sheds light on the messy political obsessions leading up to the war. With as much detail as Kenney packs into the pages–in addition to seven chapters, the book contains five appendices, comprehensive chapter notes, a 12-page bibliography and an index–readers may expect the tone to favor data over author presence, but that’s not the case here. Kenney adulates Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Jones, commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, as the emblematic British war hero, and General Leopoldo Galtieri, the military president of Argentina, draws the author’s full scorn, especially in a disdainful afterword. When the Battle of Goose Green and Darwin Hill arrives halfway through the narrative, Kenney renders British casualties with equal parts deep respect for heroism and clear frustration at its futility. By this point, it becomes evident that the hardscrabble soldiers of 2 Para–the “Toms,” here given voice through painstakingly footnoted source material–merit a greater share of the attention that the author distributes to Jones.
A fascinating and vital, if lopsided, record of an important conflict in British military history.Pub Date: April 3, 2006
ISBN: 0-9660717-1-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Part tabloid-style tearjerker, part sophisticated corporate exposÇ, by a former People magazine crime writer and bestselling author (The Strawberry Statement, 1969). On May 14, 1988, just outside Carrollton, Ky., a drunk-driving ne'er-do-well named Larry Mahoney slammed his Toyota pickup into a schoolbus carrying 63 children. The impact set the bus's fuel tank on fire. Twenty-seven died and 16 were hospitalized with burns. Only two families opted not to settle with Mahoney's insurers and the bus manufacturers. The Fairs, parents of Shannon, 14 when she died, and the Nunnallees, parents of Patty, who was 10, hired John P. Coale, Esq., the self-styled ``master of disaster'' who had represented the city of Bhopal in the Union Carbide gas leak. Coale charged the Ford Motor Company (and Sheller-Globe, which assembled the schoolbus for Ford) with ``consciously disregarding'' the danger they were creating by placing an unshielded fuel tank next to the front door of a bus that had ``flammable seats, inadequate emergency exits and a too-narrow aisle.'' Kunen's lingering account of the crash and its aftermath makes for excruciating reading, especially when he abandons taste for cheap effect. For example, describing a videotape of Shannon and her friends forming a cheerleader's pyramid, he writes: ``Was that pyramid, in that room, in that house, in that moment, on a sort of raft, borne on a river of time toward a bus crash waiting downstream?'' Kunen is on firmer ground when he describes, in meticulous detail, Ford's long history of subverting national safety standards in the name of cost- effectiveness. The book's strongest section focuses on Ford's tawdry behavior during the trial (arguing, among other things, that a schoolbus is a ``truck,'' not a ``bus,'' and therefore not subject to the safety standards of passenger vehicles). You'll want to avert your eyes as Kunen recreates the accident in all its blood and tears, but hang on for some impressive corporate muckraking. (8 pages of b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-70533-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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