A well-documented, maddening book that cries out for legislative reform and regulation.
The troubled story of private equity, which is anything but equitable.
Private equity, write financial journalists Morgenson and Rosner, typically builds nothing. Instead, it leverages troubled companies, loots what assets they have, trims expenses to the bone, and often leaves acquisitions in bankruptcy or ruin. One philosopher the authors quote calls it “asshole capitalism,” and while the authors are a touch more genteel, they don’t hesitate to call the practitioners of “this rapacious form of capitalism” pirates and worse. By way of example, they look into the private-equity acquisition of nursing homes, a favorite target. In those cases, equity ownership equates to a far higher death rate, more visits to emergency rooms, and increased Medicare costs. Private equity has also absorbed huge chunks of the medical sector, laying off doctors and cutting out essential services even at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. On that note, the authors observe, private owners took great pains to use the cheapest possible ventilators for Covid-19 patients in critical care, which finally resulted in a federal fine of $40.5 million, a fraction of what they made. As Morgenson and Rosner clearly show, the pirates are flourishing; while there were but three “debt-fueled billionaires” in 2005, there were 22 in 2020. Much of this wealth comes from self-dealing, for apart from owning medical providers, private equity is also heavily invested in insurance, ripe with the possibilities of conflict of interest. No matter what the sector—and equity is now moving rapidly into education—the modus operandi is the same: “slash costs, eliminate higher-paid union workers, and reduce employee benefits; shut down less profitable divisions; or acquire competitors to bolster the pricing power of the company they own.” In addition, these firms, which have doubled in number in the last decade—are well protected in Congress.
A well-documented, maddening book that cries out for legislative reform and regulation.Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9781982191283
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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