Nevertheless, Bair offers young readers an informed, insightful look into a crisis that continues to affect millions of...
An insider’s perspective on the causes of America’s recent financial crisis and its ongoing consequences.
The financial crisis that began in 2008 resulted in thousands of families losing their homes, millions losing their jobs and life savings, and over 100,000 businesses going bankrupt. During her five-year tenure as head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the author was intimately involved in the government’s efforts to avert a catastrophic collapse of the U.S. economy. She chronicles the many ways in which a broken economic system led families into financial trouble and explains how the terrible decisions made at the time by CEOs of multinational banks and heads of government regulatory committees led to the Great Recession. She paints a graphic, disturbing portrait of privileged power brokers who, even in the face of national disaster, put themselves and their cronies ahead of the common good. Prefacing each chapter, in which she explains clearly and concisely such difficult economic concepts as “mortgage originators” and “securitization,” are fictional vignettes showing how young people’s lives are affected. Losing a home forces one family to surrender a beloved pet to a shelter. Another family struggles to pay for food and medicine. These vignettes are the weakest parts of the book, sometimes even distracting from the important factual information.
Nevertheless, Bair offers young readers an informed, insightful look into a crisis that continues to affect millions of citizens of all ages. (financial terms, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-0085-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Best enjoyed by preexisting fans of the author.
Deaf, trans artist Man meditates on his journey and identity in this brief memoir.
Growing up in conservative central Pennsylvania was tough for the 21-year-old Deaf, genderqueer, pansexual, and biracial (Chinese/White Jewish) author. He describes his gender and sexual identity, his experiences of racism and ableism, and his desire to use his visibility as a YouTube personality, model, and actor to help other young people like him. He is open and vulnerable throughout, even choosing to reveal his birth name. Man shares his experiences of becoming deaf as a small child and at times feeling ostracized from the Deaf community but not how he arrived at his current Deaf identity. His description of his gender-identity development occasionally slips into a well-worn pink-and-blue binary. The text is accompanied and transcended by the author’s own intriguing, expressionistic line drawings. However, Man ultimately falls short of truly insightful reflection or analysis, offering a mostly surface-level account of his life that will likely not be compelling to readers who are not already fans. While his visibility and success as someone whose life represents multiple marginalized identities are valuable in themselves, this heartfelt personal chronicle would have benefited from deeper introspection.
Best enjoyed by preexisting fans of the author. (Memoir. 12-18)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-22348-2
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Like many grammar books, this starts with parts of speech and goes on to sentence structure, punctuation, usage and style....
As she does in previous volumes—Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing (2008) and The Grammar Devotional (2009)—Fogarty affects an earnest and upbeat tone to dissuade those who think a grammar book has to be “annoying, boring, and confusing” and takes on the role of “grammar guide, intent on demystifying grammar.”
Like many grammar books, this starts with parts of speech and goes on to sentence structure, punctuation, usage and style. Fogarty works hard to find amusing, even cheeky examples to illustrate the many faux pas she discusses: "Squiggly presumed that Grammar Girl would flinch when she saw the word misspelled as alot." Young readers may well look beyond the cheery tone and friendly cover, though, and find a 300+-page text that looks suspiciously schoolish and isn't really that different from the grammar texts they have known for years (and from which they have still not learned a lot of grammar). As William Strunk said in his introduction to the first edition of the little The Elements of Style, the most useful grammar guide concentrates attention “on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated.” After that, “Students profit most by individual instruction based on the problems of their own work.” By being exhaustive, Fogarty may well have created just the kind of volume she hoped to avoid.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8943-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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