by Zac Bissonnette ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 2015
A spicy portrait of a taciturn toy magnate made entertaining with sensationalistic testimonial.
The inside scoop on the rise and fall of the Beanie Baby.
Personal finance writer Bissonnette (How to Be Richer, Smarter, and Better-Looking Than Your Parents, 2012, etc.) offers a crisp, investigative and presumably unauthorized biography of creator Ty Warner, 70, and a look at the rise of Beanie Babies and their swiftly ensuing three-year consumer craze. A decade after the height of Beanie mania, the author became intrigued at the lack of an in-depth appraisal of the plush toys and their elusive creator. Warner, who abandoned an unproductive acting career to fastidiously peddle plush cats at toy trade shows, initially created the Beanie Baby toy animals for children in 1993, but they soon morphed into a hobby for obsessed collectors who misguidedly considered their purchase a “long-term investment.” Greatly aided by eBay, Ty, Inc.’s profits crested at $3 billion in retail sales in 1998. Following that peak came a slow descent into obscurity as the reclusive billionaire channeled his own cash into the company to keep it afloat. Though never scoring a prized interview with the secretive toy creator, Bissonnette supplements his analysis with copious other interviews. Current and former company employees, collectors, dealers and Warner family members contribute consistently unflattering opinions of the toy entrepreneur, painting the so-called “Steve Jobs of plush” as a calculated businessman obsessed with plastic surgery and a womanizer whose deceptive “stage persona” and uncanny product instinct generated millions. Worse are the accounts by former girlfriends Patricia Roche and Faith McGowan about their histrionic romances, as well as Warner’s sordid relationship with his own father: Much of this material feels gratuitous. The author also includes a jailhouse visit with one collector who resorted to murder over a botched transaction and the details of Warner’s recent conviction on tax evasion in 2013.
A spicy portrait of a taciturn toy magnate made entertaining with sensationalistic testimonial.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59184-602-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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BOOK REVIEW
by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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SEEN & HEARD
by Enrico Moretti ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2012
A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's...
A fresh, provocative analysis of the debate on education and employment.
Up-and-coming economist Moretti (Economics/Univ. of California, Berkeley) takes issue with the “[w]idespread misconception…that the problem of inequality in the United States is all about the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99 percent.” The most important aspect of inequality today, he writes, is the widening gap between the 45 million workers with college degrees and the 80 million without—a difference he claims affects every area of peoples' lives. The college-educated part of the population underpins the growth of America's economy of innovation in life sciences, information technology, media and other areas of globally leading research work. Moretti studies the relationship among geographic concentration, innovation and workplace education levels to identify the direct and indirect benefits. He shows that this clustering favors the promotion of self-feeding processes of growth, directly affecting wage levels, both in the innovative industries as well as the sectors that service them. Indirect benefits also accrue from knowledge and other spillovers, which accompany clustering in innovation hubs. Moretti presents research-based evidence supporting his view that the public and private economic benefits of education and research are such that increased federal subsidies would more than pay for themselves. The author fears the development of geographic segregation and Balkanization along education lines if these issues of long-term economic benefits are left inadequately addressed.
A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's more profound problems.Pub Date: May 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-75011-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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