An important work full of prudent political ideas despite its meanderings.
An acclaimed thinker reimagines the American government in this political book.
From his personalized California license plate, “GO SANE,” to his nearly two dozen works on business and education, Albrecht has spent a lifetime preaching about the need for thoughtful, evidence-based decisions that challenge the often irrational, inefficient status quo. In this volume, the Mensa Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award winner, business executive, physicist, and former military intelligence officer applies his innovative analysis to American society’s most dysfunctional facet—the government. Eschewing the right-versus-left, Republican-versus-Democrat dichotomy that characterizes American political thought today, this book offers a third path that is both revolutionary in its willingness to overhaul entrenched systems and pragmatic in its fierce devotion to tangible, measured solutions. Using the analogy of a sentimentally beloved yet increasingly dilapidated old house to represent the American government, Albrecht asks: “How can I modernize it and still keep its essential character—the things I love and value about it?” For decades, America’s politicians, the book argues, have constituted “a long parade of mediocre thinkers” who lacked the “visionary leadership” required to revamp the government for 21st-century needs. Alternately, on nearly every major topic germane to contemporary politics, the author presents readers his own ideas that ignore “the old thinking and the old clichés” that have too often permeated American policy conversations. His concepts also disregard bombastic politicians like Donald Trump who dominate the media’s political coverage.
Albrecht’s intriguing proposals span from election reform, which includes mandatory voting and the abolition of the Electoral College, to criminal justice modifications. He calls for increased attention on sexual abuse while shifting from a retribution model of punishment to one centered on restitution. On government revenue, the author recommends that loophole-laden income taxes be replaced by transactional ones that include a tax on stock market trades and a value chain tax. Many policy ideas require a reconceptualization of American society itself, such as the proposals for financial incentives geared toward “de-urbanization” and “de-consumerization” to alleviate global waste and spur citizens’ investments in their own communities. In addition to policy reforms, the book’s sweeping narrative provides a broad overview of American history, identifies the prerequisite “building blocks” of successful republics, and delivers perspectives on myriad topics related to the United States’ place in humanity’s past and future. While the volume is nearly always both insightful and accessible to a general audience, its ambitious drive to cover nearly all aspects of American government and political history sometimes makes for a frustrating read when tangential discussions distract from its more central arguments. Intertwined with the book’s policy ideas is an eclectic assortment of ruminations on topics such as whether we are “amusing ourselves to death” and discursions on the demand for a new national anthem and the need to abolish daylight saving time. There is even a hypothetical conversation between Plato and American policymakers. These numerous digressions slow down the pace of the over 500-page tome. Nevertheless, Albrecht’s refreshing and relentless nonpartisan disposition that replaces finger-pointing with solution-driven ideas is a welcome addition to today’s political discourse. This is a serious book for an era replete with “mediocre leaders” who prioritize hot takes and partisan one-upmanship over sensible, meaningful action.
An important work full of prudent political ideas despite its meanderings.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-913351-42-0
Page Count: 510
Publisher: Eyethink Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
