Once upon a time, not so long ago, really—it was 1999—there was a group of three exceedingly smart men whom Time Magazine called The Committee to Save the World. In fact, these three men— Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin—seemed to think they were the smartest people in the whole...
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A review of The Self-Made Myth, and the Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed, by Brian Miller and Mike Lapham. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). One of the freshest and most important contributions in many years to the public discourse about the future of the United States.
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It’s well known that Thomas Carlyle, a 19th century British historian, is credited with first calling economics “the dismal science.” What’s much less widely appreciated is that this derogatory label was well justified when he set the phrase down on paper in 1849. During...
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Version 1.0.0 He was the first robber baron. Other familiar names from the nineteenth century—John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan—were young men in the early days of their careers when he was at the peak of his fame. Following the Civil War, he became the richest person in American...
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A review of 1493: Uncvovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). One after another, this brilliant book brushes away a host of cherished myths that have grown up in the shadows of history.
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In the four seasons of the award-winning HBO drama, Succession, the sons and daughter of billionaire media mogul Logan Roy fight like children in a sandbox for their father’s favor—and the nod to succeed him in controlling the family business. Now, in a brilliant new book by two...
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What Senator Bernie Sanders calls the “billionaire class” has had a profound impact on American society—and, indeed, on the world at large. Still, I was surprised to learn that so many of the books I’ve reviewed involve billionaires playing instrumental roles. Yes, they’ve built huge and...
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Once upon a time they were known as Mannahata, Breukelen, Bronck’s Farm, Staten Eylandt, and Queens, after Queen Catherine of Braganza, wife of the seventeenth-century King Charles II of England. Of course, now the five boroughs of New York City have more familiar names. But that was...
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A review of The Fear Index, by Robert Harris. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). Set in Geneva, this taut thriller takes the reader into the world of a brilliant American scientist, Dr. Alexander Hoffman, who has developed mathetical formulas that make billions in profits for his hedge fund.
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Sixteen eighty-eight is familiar to many English-speakers as the year of Britain’s Glorious Revolution, when William of Orange invaded England and restored the primacy of the Protestant religion in the nation’s affairs. But University of Southern California historian John E. Wills Jr....
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A debate has been raging for years within that rarefied global community that earns its keep from the business of what we Americans call “foreign aid.” The term is faintly pejorative. (Those who favor international engagement typically call the field “official development assistance.”) And much of...
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Estimated reading time: 10 minutes We’ve been taught that the modern world dawned when Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492 in search of a route to the riches of “India.” In fact, for centuries, historians have been telling us that everything changed because...
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In the prologue to his new book, Peter S. Goodman explains that “the term Davos Man was coined in 2004 by the political scientist Samuel Huntington. He used it to describe those so enriched by globalization, so native to its workings, that they were effectively stateless, their interests and...
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When I first became aware of the stock market in 1960, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 679. By the beginning of 2022, the index had topped 36,000. Even discounting inflation, today’s Dow Jones average is five and a half times as high as it was just over 60 years ago. Of course,...
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Humanity has wrested enough abundance out of Planet Earth to feed, clothe, and house every man, woman, and child in comfort. Why, then, do tiny numbers of ultra-wealthy people possess so much more than they could ever use or spend in a hundred lifetimes—while most of the rest of the human race...
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He was born shortly after George Washington began his second term as President. When he died a decade after the Civil War, he was the richest man the new nation had ever seen. His fortune of $100 million “controlled one of every twenty American dollars in circulation at that time.”...
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World War I French statesman Georges Clemenceau is said to have proclaimed that “War is too important to be left to the generals.” He never said exactly that, but close enough. Well, I’m convinced that money is too important to leave to bankers and economists. I recognize that...
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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Most of us Americans are taught in school that the stock market crash on Wall Street caused the Great Depression. Beginning on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, we’re told, the Depression didn’t properly end in the United States until the mobilization...
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Following Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail and arriving on bookshelves the same month as Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, Vanity Fair writer Vicky Ward faced an uphill slog with the publication of The Devil’s Casino. Thousands of readers no doubt assumed the book was one more of...
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Read this book, and you’ll never look the same way again at the change jiggling in your pocket or purse. Those little bits of copper, zinc, nickel, silver, or steel are far more than they seem. Over nearly three millennia of human history, tens of thousands of different coins have made their...
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Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review,
with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review,
with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.