A brief but astute primer on the nation’s economic vulnerabilities.
An analysis of the grim economic challenges that may confront the United States in the near future.
The last election season was certainly marked by fervent ideological divides, but that doesn’t mean that it was substantively serious. Paepke (The Evolution of Progress, 1993) calls it the “Seinfeld Election” because, like that TV sitcom, it was essentially about nothing. This is especially worrisome, he says, as the nation faces a maelstrom of daunting problems on the horizon. First, he asserts that the deficit will continue to balloon as spending consistently outstrips economic growth—the result of recklessness by both political parties. The interest rates on the nation’s debt alone will have crippling effects, he says, and future presidents will have a limited toolbox of fiscal strategies available when new crises arise. Also, he paints the country’s demographic reality as both frightening and inexorable; an aging population, he says, will be less economically productive but more solicitous of government funds—a problem compounded by senior voters’ increasing political clout. Entitlement spending poses grave risks, Paepke notes, as it’s considerably easier to take on new fiscal commitments than it is to shed them. Finally, he says that lasting economic progress depends upon technological innovation, which our nation no longer adequately supports: “Any prospect of restoring past levels of growth would require…making essential investments in infrastructure, improving incentives, eliminating crony capitalism, and government belt-tightening. Even then, any return to technology-charged rates of growth may not be sustainable for long.” Overall, Paepke’s analysis is chilling but sober, as he avoids any partisan score-settling or melodramatic announcements of imminent collapse. He addresses a number of issues, as well as suggested reforms, that faithful readers of decent newspapers will already be familiar with, but he’s right to point out that they were indeed neglected during the election season. His work is relatively brief—really more of a long essay than a full-fledged book—but it serves as a helpful introduction to economic hurdles that the United States government may find hard to clear in the years ahead.
A brief but astute primer on the nation’s economic vulnerabilities.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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