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SPIDERWEB CAPITALISM

Name: SPIDERWEB CAPITALISM
Author: Kimberly Kay Hoang
ISBN: 978-0-691-22911-9

HOW GLOBAL ELITES EXPLOIT FRONTIER MARKETS

by Kimberly Kay Hoang ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2022

A work of true crime as much as scholarship, highly readable and maddening.

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A revealing look at how a secretive, often criminal element enables the rich to “make and protect not only their money, but also their reputations.”

Hoang, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, takes a deep dive into the everyday economics of “frontier markets,” places where investors make fortunes by greasing the palms of willing government officials and bankers. One such place is Vietnam, where, one wheeler-dealer told her, business students have to abandon their models as mere “bullshit” precisely because “there are too many unpredictable variables.” Instead, that source noted, an investor must be adept at “playing in the grey”—i.e., operating in the vast area that lies between legal and illegal economic activity and all too often strays into the criminal. The gray zone harbors a massive network of enablers and go-betweens who perform such essential tasks as laundering money and helping investors avoid paying taxes. The result is the titular “spiderweb capitalism,” in which “most capital accumulation takes off through a set of transactions that are often considered corrupt and dirty.” Of course, spiderwebs are designed to trap prey, and the prey in question are ordinary taxpayers and law-abiding citizens. Close to the center of the web are the ultrawealthy, surrounded by concentric rings of “fixers” who attend to their needs for a surprisingly small portion of the proceeds, selling themselves cheap. Often, these are financial insiders who do such useful things as disguising the location of their beneficiaries, since, as Hoang notes, “offshore funds and banks are less likely to do business with anyone who has a US mailing address or passport” because of comparatively stringent U.S. tax laws. In this well-written study, Hoang shows how inequality is a direct consequence of this spiderweb capitalism, which constitutes a zero-sum game in which drug cartels, organized crime, and the superrich are indistinguishable.

A work of true crime as much as scholarship, highly readable and maddening.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-691-22911-9

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Princeton Univ.

Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022

Categories:

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STAND

by Cory Booker ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 24, 2026

A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.

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A New Jersey senator’s moral manifesto.

Booker situates his narrative in the wake of his 2025 record-breaking 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, an act of physical endurance and moral insistence that serves as its animating example. Though not framed as memoir, the episode implicitly positions Booker himself as a model of the virtues he argues are essential to democratic life. Organized around 10 qualities, including agency, vulnerability, truth, perseverance, and grace, the book advances a clear thesis. “In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail.” Booker illustrates this claim through figures such as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose willingness to endure sacrifice for principle anchors the book’s moral lineage, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose composure under public scrutiny is presented as an example of dignity as civic strength. These portraits reinforce Booker’s belief that character, sustained over time, can shape public life, even when political outcomes remain uncertain or incomplete. He supplements these examples with personal stories drawn from family, faith, and community, delivered with emotional conviction and a tone that remains affirming and carefully calibrated. Much of the narrative reads like an expansive commencement address, earnest and reassuring, offering moral affirmation at moments when readers might reasonably expect sharper confrontation. That rhetorical choice ultimately defines the book’s limits. Booker acknowledges political conflict and compromise, but rarely examines them in depth, and while urging leaders to take moral risks, he avoids sustained reflection on how some of his own political decisions have tested the virtues he promotes. The result is a principled but self-conscious work that affirms shared values while offering little guidance for navigating power and accountability.

A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.

Pub Date: March 24, 2026

ISBN: 9781250436733

Page Count: 272

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026

Categories:

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | POLITICS | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979

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For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.