An excellent exposition of key factors in a perennial economic conundrum.
How trade has evolved to impact nations and cultures in ways that are always dynamic but not always predictable.
Financial theorist and historian Bernstein (The Four Pillars of Investing, 2002, etc.) is equally at home plumbing the romantic dawn of trade or untwisting the mind-wracking complexity of modern international commerce. Evidence of trade’s inevitable origin shows Stone Age nomads settling by an obsidian quarry, where no food could be found; they bartered the raw material for tools and weapons to a tribe with agricultural abundance. Confusion and controversy over trade began early. Romans, the author notes, believed that silk obtained from overland caravans came from one place, silk arriving by sea from another. (It all came from China.) While trade has always been based on the notion of fair exchange, temptations to stack the deck have been unceasing. For example, when 18th-century Britain found its craving for tea was exhausting the exchequer of silver, and China had little appetite for British goods, the infamous East India Company began to trade in opium. The narcotic, harvested in colonial India, created a social problem that still haunts East-West trade negotiations, Bernstein claims. At about the same time, British thinkers like Adam Smith and David Ricardo advanced the basic free-trade argument that persists unchanged. Politics always muddied the water, the author reminds us: The Boston Tea Party, celebrated as a patriotic act, was committed by tea merchants and their allies against a British open-market move that would have lowered the price for all colonial consumers. Bernstein doesn’t believe that high tariffs (Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act) precipitated the Great Depression, as often claimed. The challenge for free traders, as he neatly outlines it, is convincing the inevitable damaged minority to take a smaller piece of a bigger pie. Or else—and he doesn’t shrink from the word—“bribing” them with subsidies as the most efficient remedy.
An excellent exposition of key factors in a perennial economic conundrum.Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-87113-979-5
Page Count: 484
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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