by Karl Albrecht ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 2020
An important work full of prudent political ideas despite its meanderings.
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An acclaimed thinker reimagines the American government in this political book.
From his personalized California license plate, “GO SANE,” to his nearly two dozen works on business and education, Albrecht has spent a lifetime preaching about the need for thoughtful, evidence-based decisions that challenge the often irrational, inefficient status quo. In this volume, the Mensa Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award winner, business executive, physicist, and former military intelligence officer applies his innovative analysis to American society’s most dysfunctional facet—the government. Eschewing the right-versus-left, Republican-versus-Democrat dichotomy that characterizes American political thought today, this book offers a third path that is both revolutionary in its willingness to overhaul entrenched systems and pragmatic in its fierce devotion to tangible, measured solutions. Using the analogy of a sentimentally beloved yet increasingly dilapidated old house to represent the American government, Albrecht asks: “How can I modernize it and still keep its essential character—the things I love and value about it?” For decades, America’s politicians, the book argues, have constituted “a long parade of mediocre thinkers” who lacked the “visionary leadership” required to revamp the government for 21st-century needs. Alternately, on nearly every major topic germane to contemporary politics, the author presents readers his own ideas that ignore “the old thinking and the old clichés” that have too often permeated American policy conversations. His concepts also disregard bombastic politicians like Donald Trump who dominate the media’s political coverage.
Albrecht’s intriguing proposals span from election reform, which includes mandatory voting and the abolition of the Electoral College, to criminal justice modifications. He calls for increased attention on sexual abuse while shifting from a retribution model of punishment to one centered on restitution. On government revenue, the author recommends that loophole-laden income taxes be replaced by transactional ones that include a tax on stock market trades and a value chain tax. Many policy ideas require a reconceptualization of American society itself, such as the proposals for financial incentives geared toward “de-urbanization” and “de-consumerization” to alleviate global waste and spur citizens’ investments in their own communities. In addition to policy reforms, the book’s sweeping narrative provides a broad overview of American history, identifies the prerequisite “building blocks” of successful republics, and delivers perspectives on myriad topics related to the United States’ place in humanity’s past and future. While the volume is nearly always both insightful and accessible to a general audience, its ambitious drive to cover nearly all aspects of American government and political history sometimes makes for a frustrating read when tangential discussions distract from its more central arguments. Intertwined with the book’s policy ideas is an eclectic assortment of ruminations on topics such as whether we are “amusing ourselves to death” and discursions on the demand for a new national anthem and the need to abolish daylight saving time. There is even a hypothetical conversation between Plato and American policymakers. These numerous digressions slow down the pace of the over 500-page tome. Nevertheless, Albrecht’s refreshing and relentless nonpartisan disposition that replaces finger-pointing with solution-driven ideas is a welcome addition to today’s political discourse. This is a serious book for an era replete with “mediocre leaders” who prioritize hot takes and partisan one-upmanship over sensible, meaningful action.
An important work full of prudent political ideas despite its meanderings.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-913351-42-0
Page Count: 510
Publisher: Eyethink Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin
by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2018
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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