A powerful, maddening account of some of the chief drivers of inequality and immiseration in the world's richest economy.
An examination of the role of private equity companies in gutting large segments of the American economy.
It’s no small irony that the typeface in which federal antitrust investigator and prosecutor Ballou’s book is set is “owned and licensed by a private equity portfolio company.” So is much of the retail and service sector. In one case, the Carlyle Group bought the ManorCare company for $6 billion, which, by the magic of creative accounting, ManorCare had to pay back. Carlyle then sold much of ManorCare’s real estate and forced it to pay rent. In the end, Ballou writes, the resulting insolvency spoke to three facts: Private equity buys for the short term, piles up debt and fees on its acquisitions, and walks away from the wreckage thanks to elaborate protections assured by Congress, which are ensured by endless lobbying. Citing a litany of failures wrought by equity firms—Sears, Radio Shack, Toys “R” Us, Rockport, Neiman Marcus, and more—Ballou notes that the owners make their fortunes on the backs of workers deprived of pension funds and jobs. In 2021, the CEO of one equity firm made more than 10 times the CEO of JP Morgan Chase. The power of equity firms is only growing, in large measure because many municipalities are turning to them to provide and maintain infrastructure as well as “services once provided primarily by the government, including ambulance companies and firefighting departments, 911 dispatch services, and technical colleges”—all funded by taxpayers and ratepayers with no say in the matter. Ballou concludes with a program keyed to federal agencies and departments—e.g., “investigate rollups,” the practice of procuring small firms such as dental practices and merging them into larger companies; and contain the usurious practices of payday lenders, once controlled but then unleashed by Trump-era deregulation.
A powerful, maddening account of some of the chief drivers of inequality and immiseration in the world's richest economy.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9781541702103
Page Count: 368
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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