Book Review: We Need To Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy, by Eboo Patel This book may cause some people to rethink their basic assumptions about how to achieve the just society they properly desire. Eboo Patel offers essential perspectives that some white progressives (and those they’ve influenced) may have overlooked—or forgotten. When the dust …
Category Archives: Reviews
Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America
Book Review: Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America, by Brendan Ballou Be prepared to be angry when you read this book. Many people are already aware that private equity companies are financial vultures and corporate cannibals. In this book Brendan Ballou draws the curtain back from the insatiable lust for financial gain of private …
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Moral Operating Systems: How Swing Voter’s Brains Work
Moral Operating Systems: How Swing Voter’s Brains Work by Antonia Scatton An article on SubStack from Reframing America This article takes George Lakoff’s book Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know your values and frame the debate and others, and puts it to practical use. Antonia Scatton employs the analogy of different phone operating systems: Democrats …
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Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us
Book Review: Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us by Ro Khanna In this book, Ro Khanna articulates what true progressivism should look like. While promoting dignity and equitable opportunity for persons from all walks of life the default posture is communication and problem solving, without paternalism—from any quarter. Khanna …
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On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Book Review: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder [Expanded audiobook edition, which is updated in 2022 with 20 new lessons from Russia’s war on Ukraine] This audiobook starts with Timothy Snyder narrating his own short book from 2017, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. That previous work served …
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Permanent Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever
Book Review: Permanent Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever, by Nomi Prins From the documented accounts in this book, Nomi Prins demonstrates that the stock market has little relation to, and even less impact on, the real economy where most people live. Although left brain bean counters will be right at …
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Book Review: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson This is the clearest explanation I have seen anywhere of why racial animosity persists in the US and elsewhere. Through objective scholarship and observations, Isabel Wilkerson decodes (what should be) the obvious: Race is only a pointer to caste—the irrational visceral need to assert …
The World After Capital
Book Review: The World After Capital, by Albert Wenger In this book Albert Wenger colors outside of the lines with convincing arguments and research. The author portrays the practical possibility of a near ideal world with compelling empirical evidence from today’s state of technology. Imagine an environment in which everyone is able to pursue their …
Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics
Book Review: Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else), by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò This book is rich espresso, well worthwhile in keeping up with its rapid pace of concentrated thought. Táíwò takes the reader through the unintentional mistakes of well meaning (white) people who (understandably) feel that deference is the …
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The Man Who Broke Capitalism
Book Review: The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy, by David Gelles If this book doesn’t boil your blood you’re part of the problem. In this account of the late GE CEO Jack Welch, David Gelles illuminates the essence …