A powerful, bracing call for a return to New Deal ethics in the age of Trump and Brexit.
A potent argument for “ethical capitalism,” driven not only by greed, but by “moral purpose,” to overcome deep societal rifts.
In this masterful blend of personal experience and the best thinking of diverse social scientists, economist Collier (Economics and Public Policy/Oxford Univ.; Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World, 2013, etc.) analyzes the current breakup of the “cornerstones of belonging”—family, workplace, and nation—and the ensuing frustrations that have opened the way for populists and ideologues. He urges pragmatic policies to manage capitalism (which is “not working” for many), rebuild the “beleaguered center” of the political spectrum and restore the “ethics of community” to contemporary life. He centers on three major societywide divides: between metropolitan centers and the provinces; between successful and poor families; and between prosperous nations (the United States, Britain, and France), where he has lived, and the developing world, where he has worked. “There is a widening regional divide between the booming metropolis and decaying provincial cities; there is a widening class divide between those in prestigious and fulfilling jobs and those in dead-end jobs, or none at all,” he writes. Only “practical new thinking” can heal such “damaging cleavages.” Collier’s benchmark for the “ethical state” is the postwar period (1945-1970) of his childhood, when each nation became a “gigantic community” based on “a strong sense of shared identity, obligation, and reciprocity” and harnessed capitalism for the benefit of all. The author is especially good on the forces unraveling shared identities, from the rise of smartphones and social media to declining home ownership among the young and my-country-first nationalism as opposed to patriotism. Many of Collier’s recommendations stress the need to strengthen failing families by “curtailing self-aggrandizing strategies of those who are well educated and highly skilled.” Great firms need a sense of purpose beyond making money, he writes.
A powerful, bracing call for a return to New Deal ethics in the age of Trump and Brexit.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-274865-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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 Yorker staff 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
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