A sharply written rebuttal of prevailing orthodoxies about the realities of global economics after 2008.
Guardian contributor Clark and Heath (Sociology/Univ. of Manchester) seek “to identify the distinctive social maladies that flow from economic stagnation…in Britain and the United States.”
The authors debunk the opinions of experts who assert the supremacy of “the Anglo-Saxon societies” and their liberal, free market–based economics over capitalist alternatives from continental Europe and Japan. Clark and Heath probe deeply into the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath by evaluating the quality of the unemployment numbers, which are often the preferred metrics for assessing the impact of the crisis, especially against the members of the Euro zone. Their basis is a five-year (2007-2012) international investigation known as “Social Change: A Harvard-Manchester Initiative,” which Heath co-directed with Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard. The directors received assistance from a number of Anglo-American universities and institutes, as well as a variety of organizations, including Save the Children and the Resolution Foundation. The authors argue that the growth of inequality in both countries since the 1970s provides the key to deconstructing the significance of unemployment statistics. They consider social consequences—e.g., the increase in working women and unmarried females and the decline in household formation—and they draw on the latest research to show that “the reach of the recessionary damage” can also be identified by tracing the jobs that have replaced those lost. In both the U.S. and the U.K., this has produced a hollowing-out of the middle of the workforce, as job quality, skills, pay and security have been downgraded, especially since the 1970s; in continental Europe, this shrinking middle is not nearly as widespread. Furthermore, the proceeds of economic growth have been allocated almost exclusively to the top percentiles of the income pyramid—again, this is not the case in continental Europe. The authors also go on to indict “malign passivity towards the lowliest living standards.”
A sharply written rebuttal of prevailing orthodoxies about the realities of global economics after 2008.Pub Date: June 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-300-20377-6
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Useful, credible and smart.
A handy guide to personal finance and a convincing argument for improved financial literacy.
Secrets is a near-encyclopedic compilation of financial advice from Mincher, a self-made multimillionaire. (He made his first million by the age of 25.) And though much of his wisdom derives solely from his own experience, the seven-figure investment portfolio that backs it up is difficult to deny. In many ways, the story of how the author made his money is as interesting as the financial counsel he provides. A born businessman, he formed his first company in high school and won awards as a young entrepreneur. He earned his fortune as the owner of a charter-bus service and, later, as a regional telecom baron. Mincher offers brief chapters on just about every conceivable area of financial inquiry, from credit checks to buying a car to investing in the stock market. His volume works more effectively as a reference than a how-to to be read in a few sittings. But as such it is very valuable indeed; clearly organized and helpfully broken up into bite-size sections, the information is easy to digest. Underpinning it all is the author’s fervent belief that most people need to know more about their money. Mincher has an autodidact’s ambivalence toward traditional education; a college drop-out, he preaches “street smarts” and inveighs a bit too frequently against odd targets like high-school calculus in his introduction. Nonetheless, his call for more and better financial education rings true, especially as subprime lenders have recently wreaked havoc on world economic markets by preying on the financially non-savvy.
Useful, credible and smart.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9797003-0-9
Page Count: 426
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A random walk through the entrepreneurial outskirts of postindustrial commerce and show biz with a tour guide whose spiel has a nasty edge to it. Drawing on stories he has reported as a CBS TV correspondent, Geist (Little League Confidential, 1992, etc.) offers a discontinuous series of short takes on offbeat enterprises that have yielded the venturesome Americans who launched or embraced them modest amounts of fame and fortune. Cases in point range from the leading breeder of racing pigs through the inventor of the car- crushing leviathans known as monster trucks and Florida's top vendor of recycled golf balls to the two struggling illustrators who created Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Covered as well are the proprietors of nail-care salons, traffic-safety schools, and the seemingly endless parade of lurid talk shows on daytime television, plus the resourceful aerospace engineer who first thought of blasting bullet holes in wearing apparel as a lucrative fashion statement. In most instances, unfortunately, the author goes beyond poking gentle fun at his subjects and their antics; indeed, he invariably holds them up to gratuitously savage ridicule. Nor can Geist resist any opportunity to show what a clever fellow he is, even when a straightforward account of junk entertainment like ``American Gladiators'' could speak for itself. All too often the effect is akin to the tedious pall cast by a stand-up comic who, bedazzled by his own wit, can't bear to leave the stage. While the author closes with backhanded homage to Judge Roy Hofheinz (builder of Houston's pace-setting Astrodome), a start-to-finish audit of his other vignettes reveals that they reach no particularly startling conclusions about the latter-day US or any other substantive matter. Sporadically amusing but wholly dispensable.
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-399-13883-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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