by Richard Subber | Nov 25, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics, Power and inequality
the many meanings of “shareholder value”…
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
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022
264 pages
Gelles has written a dreadfully important expose of the evolution of the disastrous idolatry of “maximizing shareholder value” and funneling more and more of America’s corporate wealth to the relatively small cadre of executives and directors and financiers who took advantage of it to line their own pockets and deny economic success to just about everyone else.
Of course, Gelles doesn’t say that Jack Welch was the only one who did it. For my taste, the title of the book is a distraction from the truth: America’s financial elite have misappropriated the industrial wealth of the country.
The Man Who Broke Capitalism concludes with a broadly detailed array of governmental policies that would remediate the disaster that Jack Welch and the Chicago school of economists and so many others created to be a substitute for the notion that a corporation is a creature of our society, and is best understood as a conduit for creating goods, creating wealth, and widely distributing both.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Ethan Frome
it’s about not being satisfied with less…
by Edith Wharton
–
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Nov 4, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, Democracy, Politics, Power and inequality
We’re all Americans…
Book review:
Brown is the New White:
How the Demographic Revolution
has Created a New American Majority
by Steve Phillips
New York: The New Press, 2016
Phillips offers blockbuster data that spells out the demographic reality: a progressive, multiracial majority exists in the United States. It’s up to the Democratic Party to take the lead and serve this majority in ways that will benefit all Americans.
Phillips tells it like it is: Democrats lose at the polls when progressive whites and progressive voters of color don’t think it’s worth their time to vote. It happens too often.
Brown is the New White says the long game is to forget about the mythical “white swing vote” and pay attention to the increasing segment of the electorate that is not white. We’re all Americans here.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Sea Runners
…it informs, it does not soar…
by Ivan Doig
–
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 19, 2022 | Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality, World history
swords, but no ploughshares…
Book review:
The Great Game:
The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
by Peter Hopkirk
New York: Kodansha International, Ltd., 1992
564 pp
This was almost entirely new history to me. I guess I’m a typical Westerner—I don’t know much about Asia.
It’s not enough that the indigenous peoples of Asia have been squabbling and fighting with each other for centuries. The British and other Europeans and the Russians decided to get involved in the “Great Game” of trying to control and expropriate the riches of the East.
The Great Game tells it all.
It hasn’t turned out well at all.
Endless warfare is not the way to go about it. It don’t work.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review:
The American Revolution: A History
The “Founders” were afraid of “democracy”…
by Gordon S. Wood
–
Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 5, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Politics, Power and inequality, Revolutionary War
umm, they forgot about “patriotism”…
Book review:
The Political Depravity of the Founding Fathers:
Studies in the History of The United States
by John Bach McMaster
New York: Noonday Press, division of Farrar, Straus & Company, 1964
Originally published as With The Fathers in 1896
McMaster writes with the perspective of 125 years ago, and it’s all too obvious. However, this is not a fatal problem.
The Political Depravity of the Founding Fathers is a largely chronological elaboration of the many political and self-interested motivations that were the controlling factors in the creation of the Constitution, the Monroe Doctrine, George Washington’s presidency, and a broad scope of public concerns during the 19th century.
McMaster has not written anything like “love ya” biographies of the so-called Founding Fathers.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Sea Runners
…it informs, it does not soar…
by Ivan Doig
–
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Aug 1, 2022 | Democracy, Politics, Power and inequality, Tidbits
Bite off as much as you can chew…
“Pick battles big enough to matter,
small enough to win.”
The wisdom of Jonathan Kozol (b1936)
Public education activist, keen thinker
This quote from Jonathan Kozol is a strategic, actionable version of similar quotations from historic writers:
Voltaire: “The best is the enemy of the good.”
Confucius: “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”
Shakespeare: “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”
This is wisdom indeed for those of us who strive to make things better in the political arena that threatens us today.
I’m convinced that it’s worse than foolish to support or vote for a fringe or “outsider” candidate who has sparkling, pure principles and no chance in hell of winning. If you have to, hold your nose in the primary election and vote for the Democrat or Republican of your choice who can actually win the election.
Voting for a more or less surefire loser as a matter of principle—except in the general election—is just like throwing your vote away, and letting everyone else choose the winner.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Ethan Frome
not being satisfied with less…
by Edith Wharton
–
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Jul 22, 2022 | American history, Book reviews, Books, Democracy, History, Politics, Power and inequality
Partisan politics, just like today…
Book review:
A Magnificent Catastrophe:
The Tumultuous Election of 1800,
America’s First Presidential Campaign
by Edward J. Larson
New York: Free Press, 2007
A Magnificent Catastrophe tells us about yet another nightmare in American history that we don’t know well enough.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went head to head in the first presidential campaign that was based on party politics and partisan venality and telling lies for political advantage.
In other words, just like today.
The election outcome in 1800 wasn’t clear cut—the politicians were at each other’s throats, and the public interest was lost in the shuffling.
Politics started getting its bad name more than 200 years ago.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.
Book review: Forced Founders
by Woody Holton
The so-called “Founding Fathers”
weren’t the only ones
who helped to shape our independence…
–
As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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