A well-researched, user-friendly introduction to the importance of affordable housing.
Bertoldi makes the case for the broader social value of affordable housing in this debut nonfiction book.
“To have the American dream come true,” Jeffrey Whiting writes in the book’s foreword, “there must be help along the way.” As co-founders of CREA, a limited liability company that claims to have benefitted around 230,000 people in need of affordable housing, Whiting and Bertoldi have long advocated that housing not only provides a better life for families but is an essential engine of a thriving economy. Seeking to “destigmatize” and “depoliticize” the topic, Bertoldi begins the book with a series of chapters that introduce readers to the current housing crisis’ impact on local and national economies and the basics of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), hoping to “remove the mystery” surrounding a misunderstood industry often greeted by a NIMBY (“Not in My Backyard”) mindset. The book’s middle chapters note the ways in which affordable housing benefits all Americans (including those who have already secured reliable housing) by highlighting its impact on healthcare (“home and health go hand in hand”), business (more than 40% of the consumer price index “is driven by housing costs”), and important ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) standards for increasingly socially conscious corporations. The book concludes with nonpartisan, workable solutions that the author believes policymakers, investors, and voters across ideological lines could support. With an MBA in finance from Boston University and decades of experience with LIHTC, Bertoldi does an admirable job of acquainting neophytes with the basics of the housing industry while also backing his claims with a wealth of data and dozens of footnotes for those who need to see the underlying research. This emphasis on accessibility is further reflected by the book’s concise writing style, which delivers an engaging narrative in less than 130 total pages and is accompanied by an ample assortment of charts, graphs, and other visual aids.
A well-researched, user-friendly introduction to the importance of affordable housing.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798887500911
Page Count: 208
Publisher: ForbesBooks
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.
Two bestselling authors engage in an enlightening back-and-forth about Jewishness and antisemitism.
Acho, author of Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, and Tishby, author of Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, discuss many of the searing issues for Jews today, delving into whether Jewishness is a religion, culture, ethnicity, or community—or all of the above. As Tishby points out, unlike in Christianity, one can be comfortably atheist and still be considered a Jew. She defines Judaism as a “big tent” religion with four main elements: religion, peoplehood, nationhood, and the idea of tikkun olam (“repairing the world through our actions”). She addresses candidly the hurtful stereotypes about Jews (that they are rich and powerful) that Acho grew up with in Dallas and how Jews internalize these antisemitic judgments. Moreover, Tishby notes, “it is literally impossible to be Jewish and not have any connection with Israel, and I’m not talking about borders or a dot on the map. Judaism…is an indigenous religion.” Acho wonders if one can legitimately criticize “Jewish people and their ideologies” without being antisemitic, and Tishby offers ways to check whether one’s criticism of Jews or Zionism is antisemitic or factually straightforward. The authors also touch on the deteriorating relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, despite their historically close alliance during the civil rights era. “As long as Jewish people get to benefit from appearing white while Black people have to suffer for being Black, there will always be resentment,” notes Acho. “Because the same thing that grants you all access—your skin color—is what grants us pain and punishment in perpetuity.” Finally, the authors underscore the importance of being mutual allies, and they conclude with helpful indexes on vernacular terms and customs.
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668057858
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome call to grow up and cut out the whining.
The New York Times columnist serves up a cogent argument for shelving the grudge and sucking it up.
In 1976, Tom Wolfe described the “me decade” as a pit of mindless narcissism. A half century later, Bruni, author of Born Round and other bestselling books, calls for a renaming: “‘Me Turning Point’ would have been more accurate, because the period of time since has been a nonstop me jamboree.” Our present cultural situation, he notes, is marked by constant grievance and endless grasping. The ensuing blame game has its pros. Donald Trump, he notes, “became a victor by playing the victim, and his most impassioned oratory, such as it was, focused not on the good that he could do for others but on the bad supposedly done to him.” Bruni is an unabashed liberal, and while he places most of the worst behavior on the right—he opens with Sean Hannity’s bleating lie that the Biden administration was diverting scarce baby formula from needy Americans to illegal immigrants—he also allows that the left side of the aisle has committed its share of whining. A case in point: the silencing of a professor for showing an image of Mohammed to art students, neither religiously proscribed nor done without ample warning, but complained about by self-appointed student censors. Still, “not all grievances are created equal,” he writes. “There is January 6, 2021, and there is everything else. Attempts by leaders on the right to minimize what happened that day and lump it together with protests on the left are as ludicrous as they are dangerous.” Whether from left or right, Bruni calls for a dose of humility on the part of all: “an amalgam of kindness, openness, and silliness might be an effective solvent for grievance.”
A welcome call to grow up and cut out the whining.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668016435
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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