A welcome book that blends financial investigation with useful investment strategies.
There’s a sucker born every minute—and, as the recent GameStop bubble showed, there’s a Wall Street army waiting to take their money.
Financial journalist Jakab, a former stock analyst at Credit Suisse, turns received wisdom on its head. Where the recent GameStop run from nearly worthless paper to vastly inflated stock has been touted as a win for the little guy, the author considers the situation a model of stock market insiders knowing how to play whatever game is on the table. Those who bargained that GameStop was a sure thing didn’t understand the game of selling short, one that requires nerves of steel and, typically, deep pockets. “Wall Street likes volatility,” Jakab writes, again against received wisdom, “and it absolutely loves it when millions of new, inexperienced investors rush in with their savings.” Because those new investors trusted not the insiders but instead the knowledge of a crowd, they were ripe for the plucking, while big investors were also clamoring for a piece of the action. “Suddenly brokers like Robinhood suspended the ability to buy more of the stocks that were on everybody’s lips,” writes the author. “No such restrictions were placed on the fat cats, though. The game was rigged! But it always has been.” Jakab’s account of how Wall Street works requires financial common sense and some numeracy, though it’s quite accessible. He’s also a seasoned journalist who leavens money talk with human interest stories, including some that concern people who couldn’t really afford the loss but who lost on GameStop anyway. This is the valuable part of the book for would-be investors. The author writes that he “has warned against the dangers of free trading and free advice on the internet, both of which spurred mainly young people to be hyperactive trend chasers.” Good advice is available, but it costs—just as it costs time and money to be a conscious investor.
A welcome book that blends financial investigation with useful investment strategies.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-42115-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
By degrees unsettling, amusing, and prescient; a much-needed audit of a consuming idea.
A study of how the measurement and indulgence of “genius” has changed over time.
Over the past couple of centuries, the boundaries of genius have been used to justify eugenics, consolidate power, and excuse eccentric and even morally egregious behavior. This, Atlantic staff writer Lewis argues, grew from a shift to a secular world, wherein brilliance is no longer the guarded realm of religious authority or divine inspiration, but instead anchored in the fullness of the individual. Her book offers a sweeping, entertaining, and at times disconcerting read of the new scaffolding of mythology that genius now demands. She moves in three parts, from its identification, measurement, and, sometimes, weaponization by “genius hunters”; through the creation of and care for dominant archetypes of genius, such as lone rebels and tortured artists; to the extreme veneration of “hardcore” genius in the modern market- and tech-driven world—personified by Elon Musk. Along the way she interrogates the obsessions of Great Man theory, inherited greatness, and IQ tests, and she pokes with wry humor at the self-justification, oversimplification, hubris, male dominance, and fetishization surrounding her case studies. While her examples—including Galileo, the Beatles, Hollywood biopics, and the anti-establishment pseudoscience unearthed by the Covid-19 pandemic—are drawn from her own interests, Lewis only hints at her own ideas of genius, its limits, and the purpose it might legitimately serve. Instead, her argument focuses on undermining the persistent idea that geniuses constitute a special class of people, exempt from the social norms and moral expectations of the rest. By illustrating the stakes of this shift, Lewis issues an effective call for a more carefully tempered understanding of genius in our precarious times, one that celebrates creativity, innovation, and achievement rather than idolizing a maker’s rarity and eccentricity.
By degrees unsettling, amusing, and prescient; a much-needed audit of a consuming idea.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9798217178575
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Thesis/Penguin
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Slick, sunny-side-up profiles of 50 flourishing industrial enterprises. Some brief connective commentary apart, Jasinowski (president of the National Association of Manufacturers) and Hamrin (a freelance economic consultant) rely on anecdotal evidence to make their principal point: that American manufacturing has staged a remarkable, competitive comeback from its near-death experience during the 1980s. In addition, the achievements of every organization in their 50-company sample are attributed to one of ten paths to success: employee empowerment; training and retraining of workers; rewarding performance; exceeding customer expectations; envisioning new products and markets; going global; total quality management; achieving environmental excellence; speed and agility; and shaking up the organization. While the authors round up many of the usual world-class suspects as exemplars of latter-day excellence (Chrysler, Emerson Electric, Ford Motor, Intel, Motorola, Searle, and Xerox, to name but a few), they have showcased some less familiar outfits as well. Cases in point range from Great Plains Software through Johnsonville Foods, Kingston Technology, Remmele Engineering, Thermo Electron, and Wadia Digital. On the minus side of the ledger, the relatively rigid format Jasinowski and Hamrin use to present their summary case studies soon grows tiresome. Nor could all selections pass a cognitive-dissonance test. By way of example, the authors include happy-talk rundowns on USX-US Steel as well as three of the nimbler rivals (Chaparral, Nucor, Oregon Steel) that have poached on its traditional preserves in recent years. Although Jasinowski and Hamrin cover a handful of corporations that have made a virtue of environmental necessity, moreover, they stand mute on the score of those that may have overcome less edifying problems with product recalls, racial discrimination, or sexual harassment. The bottom line: These relentlessly upbeat vignettes of US business are to management guides what fast food is to haute cuisine.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-50756-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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