A nihilistically hilarious commentary on the corporate world.
Jackson presents a satirical guidebook for prospective oligarchs on how to exploit politicians, capitalism, and the American public.
“Money is how we, as a species, determine our worth,” the author writes in the opening pages of this manual for the aspiring oligarch. “We are not measured by the strength of our character, our integrity, or our altruism.” The author blends humorous insights on 21st-century capitalism with a tongue-in-cheek history of economic exploitation from Crassus of Rome (who created his own private army) to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, whose interests in space exploration, the author asserts, stem from their desire to “escape the hellscape they created.” Another oligarch, Mali’s Mansa Musa, gave so much of his wealth away in the 14th century, Jackson writes, that it devalued the price of gold, teaching future oligarchs a key lesson “to never give away anything you own.” Readers learn how Henry J. Heinz used his influence with President Teddy Roosevelt to pass food regulations that eliminated competition, and how Sanford Dole convinced President Grover Cleveland to annex Hawaii by military force. While informative, the book’s strength lies in its humor and biting satirical commentary. In a particularly effective joke, a chapter ends abruptly with a pop-up ad (“Want to keep reading?”) that offers readers the rest of the book for a discounted price if they “SUBSCRIBE NOW.” Other hilarious gags include missing citations that have been sold off to corporate advertisers (endnote 2, for example, was sold to “Starkist Brand Tuna: Overfish’d ’til it’s delisch’”) and a who’s who–styled appendix of “The Great Exploiters of Earth.” The author’s engaging, wickedly smart writing style is accompanied by a wealth of visual aids, from photographs with humorous captions to original political cartoons, such as one drawing of the “Welcome” gate at a McMansion replete with barbed wire, cameras, guard dogs, and prison towers. This follow-up volume to Jackson’s previous publication, So You Want To Be a Dictator (2022), will leave readers longing for more guidebooks in the series.
A nihilistically hilarious commentary on the corporate world.Pub Date: Dec. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9798218310257
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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