Book Review: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man (2020). Mary Trump, PhD.

I decided after a year or two of the Trump presidency that I wasn’t going to read most of the tell-all books about Donald Trump, his life, his corrupt administration, and all the bizarreness that constantly surrounds him. I read several of them early on, but quickly concluded that reading these books was a joyless and monumentally depressing exercise.

Having recognized before he was even elected that Donald Trump was clearly a sociopath and a narcissist, I soon discovered that reading more details of his pathetic existence and chaotic administration brought me few additional insights into his condition and behavior, and no enjoyment whatsoever. Another disincentive to reading Trump-related books was the fact that every shocking new detail of his story contained in the latest sensational book release immediately appeared on every cable news show and in the constant news coverage of Trump, so there was never anything new or surprising to be learned by the time any of these books reached the bookshelves.

Despite all that, I recently read Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough, the only book to appear so far written by an actual Trump family member. The author is someone who knew the long history of the family members and their relationships from close-up personal experience. Her insider’s account is enhanced and made even more credible by the fact that she is also a PhD clinical psychologist, who specializes (not surprisingly) in the sorts of dysfunctional psychological conditions which appear to abound in the lives of many of the Trump family members.

Of course, much of the most interesting content from the book was also immediately revealed through the mass media as soon as it was published, partly through broadcast interviews with the author herself, so again, the amount of new information in the book that wasn’t already a part of the gigantic trove of public knowledge of Donald Trump by the time I read it was fairly limited. Nevertheless, there was value in hearing the whole story and her clinical analysis directly from her, in book form – it made it more believable, more complete, and more emotionally comprehensible and resonant than most of the Trump literature.   

Mary Trump was the daughter of Donald Trump’s older brother Fredy. The story she tells about the family is almost Shakespearean in its dramatic excesses and its notorious, conniving characters. At the head of the family was Fred Trump, a driven entrepreneur and family patriarch who built a real estate empire in Brooklyn, and became fabulously wealthy, but had little time or love for anyone else. Like most patriarchs, he looked originally to his oldest son, Mary’s father Fredy, to become his principal successor and heir in his real estate business.

The problem with this plan was that Fredy had little interest in or aptitude for his father’s real estate business. He went off to serve in the army, which he liked and where he did well, but this disgusted his father, who had no use for the military or the concept of service. Fredy loved boats and airplanes too, and had the money to buy them and learn to operate them, but his father also had nothing but contempt for these activities. At one point, Fredy even snuck off to become an airline pilot, a goal which he actually achieved on his own, and was able to pursue successfully for a brief period of time, thereby further enraging his father.

But that didn’t last, because Fredy also had alcohol and drug problems, caused no doubt by the constant stress of trying and failing to satisfy his father's plans for him. So Fredy kept coming back to his father and the family business each time he failed at his own projects, trying hopelessly to find a role in the business he could play well, to win his cold-hearted father’s approval, and eventually be able to support his growing family.

Meanwhile, Donald (Fred's second son) was observing Fredy’s failures to meet their father’s harsh and unforgiving expectations, and decided to modify his own behaviors in ways that would gain him “favorite” status with his father Fred. The behaviors he chose were exactly those that we recognize in the troubled and extreme personality we know today. 

He would become a “killer”. He would be the person who disparaged and mocked “losers”, ironically eventually even including his father, after Fred was afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease. He would learn to treat everyone – even his closest family members – as worthless objects, to be despised, used and manipulated for his own purposes, without any sympathy or empathy for any difficulties they might be experiencing. And he would learn to excel in creating a fictitious public image of himself as a powerful, wealthy, and indomitable businessman, regardless of his lack of any demonstrated abilities or personal achievements independent of those enabled by his wealthy father.

According to Mary Trump, every one of the destructive and dysfunctional behaviors Donald tried out on those around him just gained him more approval from Fred Senior, and more leniency from this cold-blooded father for his obnoxiousness, cruelty and misbehavior. It was ironic, as Ms. Trump points out, that none of Fred's indulgence could ever actually reassure the chronically insecure Donald deep down that his father really loved him. And he probably didn't. Fred didn't appear to have the capacity to love or empathize with others either, just as Donald doesn't.

This is an extremely disturbing but highly credible insider’s look into the dark heart of a family with serious behavioral and psychological disorders, who somehow produced the strange and historically anomalous figure of Donald Trump, whose ambitions, unchecked rage, sociopathy and incompetence have so clouded the recent past, present and perhaps near future of our country. Recommended.

Book Review: The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (2021). Michael Lewis.

On the back cover of Michael Lewis’s latest non-fiction book, The Premonition, there is a single quote of praise for the author from reviewer John Williams of the New York Times Book Review. The quote says, “I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it.”

That is high praise, but an apt description of the quality of Lewis’s story-telling and his books, which among others include The Fifth Risk, which I previously reviewed; The Big Short, his insightful and scathing story of Wall Street and the financial and political shenanigans that caused the 2008 financial crisis; and also Moneyball, his fascinating account of how a gifted young statistician and Billy Beane, the unconventional general manager of the 2002 Oakland Athletics, upended Major League Baseball's traditional player evaluation process and built a winning baseball team of young “dark horse” players on a limited budget. Moneyball was also later made into a popular sports drama movie starring Brad Pitt.

The Premonition takes a look at a topic you’d think none of us would ever want to read another word about, the 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It brings to light a gripping story behind the stories we’ve all heard, and it's a story most of us knew nothing about, despite the endless media coverage of the pandemic and how it's been handled here in the U.S.

At the center of his narrative is a small group of unheralded experts in the field of public health, including a 13-year old girl whose school science project turned into a key tool for modeling disease spread within social networks; a California doctor and public health officer whose relentless drive to save lives by taking action based on scientific knowledge constantly ran afoul of political actors and their self-serving agendas; and a small group of epidemiology policy outsiders across the U.S., heavily steeped in the research and history of the 1918 Flu epidemic, who recognized the pandemic’s potential danger almost the moment it first appeared in Wuhan, but had to fight against medical and political establishments in Washington D.C., in the states and at the CDC to make their voices heard, and to come up with effective means for combating the pandemic’s spread.

In the course of telling this inspirational yet depressing story of how the U.S. bungled its early response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lewis demolishes the image of the CDC as an effective instrument of pandemic response and management. He paints it as it ultimately was seen by this small group of outside experts, as a stuffy and self-serving academic bureaucracy, reluctant to make recommendations or take action that might not succeed, and reflexively protective of its data and knowledge in service to its production of academic research papers rather than the sort of rapid “break the glass” action required in the face of a public health emergency.

Lewis also goes into some fascinating detail about the impact of rapid genomic testing for the first time in this pandemic, and how our ability to quickly read the genetic code of the disease as it mutated from person to person created at least a theoretical means to map the spread of the disease, and better understand what people and events were the “super-spreaders” that needed to be isolated to slow the disease’s spread. This little understood capability was not used very effectively, due to the lack of interest in resourcing widespread testing early on.

The book is a riveting story of private insights and urgency, contrasted with public delay, inertia, inaction and incompetence. In addition to these little known public health and epidemiological heroes behind the scenes, who ultimately ended up providing much of the most effective public health advice for fighting the pandemic, we see a few political figures who did listen, and acted relatively promptly upon the science-based advice coming from these experts, including Governor Gavin Newsom in California, as well as a few senior figures in the Trump administration and at the CDC, who had to operate anonymously and stay “below the radar” to try to steer the federal government toward an effective response.

For all of us who followed the news throughout the pandemic, and were trying to make sense of how the government and the CDC could seem to be so slow, so disorganized, and so lacking in preparedness for a pandemic like COVID-19, The Premonition provides much needed clarity.  It highlights many of the reasons for our national failures in responding to the pandemic quickly and effectively, and puts a spotlight on the small group of people who ultimately had the right answers, but were often thwarted in being able to get federal, state and local governments to follow their advice, and swiftly take the necessary steps to stop the spread of the disease.

It's a powerful, intriguing and illuminating account of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and some of the previously unknown human dramas and events behind the scenes that played out as our health system and society struggled to find answers to the emerging public health crisis. Very highly recommended.

Book Review: Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and Unexpected Solutions (2018). Johann Hari.

This is an excellent and unusual exploration of the psychology of depression, which posits a 9-point spectrum of situations and causes in peoples' life situations that create most depression, rather than the more conventional medical view that depression is primarily a biologically based condition, and therefore something that can be easily treated with medication and other psychiatric therapies.

The author reviews the scientific literature in each of the different life experience areas, then moves on to the second section, which talks about the sorts of changes in lives and society which can help control, reduce and eliminate depression.

This book is ultimately political and economic in its view of depression and its sources in modern society. The main thrust of its arguments is that we live in human societies where too many people are economically disadvantaged, politically powerless, and have too few meaningful and supportive relationships with other people in our families, friendship circles, work organizations and communities.

A well-presented case for the need for major changes in our political, social and economic conditions, in order to live happier and less depressed lives, and avoid many of the negative personal and societal effects of depression. Recommended.

Book Review: Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (2017). Nancy MacLean.

I previously reviewed Dark Money, Jane Mayer’s essential study on the long-term plans, motivations and activities of the Koch brothers and their circle of other right wing billionaire families (especially the Mercer and deVos families), and their efforts to use their vast wealth to undermine the foundations of American democracy, in the interests of ridding themselves of governmental regulations and any obligation to help provide for the less wealthy and fortunate.

I consider Dark Money to be one of the most revealing books on contemporary American politics ever written. I would encourage everyone to read it, in order to understand much of why our country’s politics and our common commitment to democracy seem to have unwound before our eyes in recent years.

Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains is a vital case study of the broader phenomenon which Mayer documented so thoroughly. It is a chilling book that documents the life of an influential right-wing academic, whose entire career provides a clear example of the radical right billionaires' use of self-financed academic influence operations over many decades to try to develop, justify and popularize otherwise deeply unpopular ideas, and promote political and economic opinion that supports their business and financial interests rather than those of the general public.

It provides abundant documentation from the archives of this major economic theorist of the libertarian right in the late 20th century, James Buchanan, of a multi-generational effort and plan to destroy American democracy, in favor of "liberty" for the super-wealthy at the expense of everyone else, or in other words, plutocracy.

It was possible to tell this story, because the author gained access to Buchanan’s files and notes spanning a half-century of his career, including correspondence, academic papers and other types of private documents, showing how these extreme right-wing political influence operations were planned and carried out, particularly within and supported by conservative and libertarian academics, and certain sympathetic universities and economics departments that were well supported and rewarded financially for their efforts.

This is a notable and important book about the roots of American radical right movements, their academic thought and political organizing over the past fifty years, and the money and individuals who brought it all to us and to our political system. Recommended.

Book Review: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018). Patrick Radden Keefe.

This popular book from 2018 is about the Provisional IRA (commonly known as "the Provos") and the murder of a mother of 10 children during "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Very well-written and suspenseful, this history of the Troubles, and the political violence and terrorist groups of the period (as experienced by a number of the Provisional IRA leaders, members, defectors and family members), was made possible in part due to confessions made by several of the Provos as part of a long-term history project at a major Boston university.

The participants in the study who provided testimony to the project were promised their words would be held in secret until the participants were all dead. That promise failed, however, when U.S. courts intervened on behalf of IRA victims and Irish police investigators, and opened some of the history project files, adding to the climate of mistrust, fear and retribution among the people, organizations and events of the period.

The author interviewed many of the key players, as well as the family members of victims of IRA terrorism, and particularly spotlighted the role and activities of Jerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein (the Provos' political front group), which was a recurring topic throughout the narration.   

This is probably one of the best and most moving histories of that bloody period, one that describes clearly the terrible personal costs of living and trying to survive in a civil war zone. 

Given the increasingly open advocacy by some in our own society for the idea that insurrection, religious and ethnic intolerance, paramilitary violence and civil war are what we need here in the United States, it can be read as a stark cautionary tale of what that experience actually feels like, and of the harm it inflicts on all those forced to live through it, regardless of which side they're on. Recommended.

Book Review: The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us (2019). Paul Tough.

This book, which was originally published under the title The Years That Matter Most, is a surprisingly interesting and informative exploration of the college admissions process, and how success getting in and completing a degree shapes life outcomes. 

Topics covered include: the special role of elite universities, and the way the competition and criteria to get in to them ends up favoring the children of the wealthy; the social and academic difficulties of poor and minorities when they do get in to the elite schools; the ways that SAT and ACT also favor the wealthy, but are poor predictors of collegiate academic success compared to high school grades; the value of "top 10%" admissions policies in bringing in students who are the most highly qualified and most likely to succeed, regardless of social class; and academic approaches and non-academic factors that affect success and degree completion.

The author nicely blends social science research in these areas with personal interviews and stories of individual students, whose experiences illustrate different aspects of the topics covered in the book. Recommended.

Book Review: The Looming Tower (2007). Lawrence J. Wright.

I read this very good book and Pulitzer Prize winner after seeing the same-named HBO mini-series (starring Jeff Daniels) based on it. It is an absorbing account of some of the key events in the late 1990s and early 2000s which led up to the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

The story is told through the experiences and perspectives of a few important characters, particularly in the F.B.I., C.I.A. and Al Qaeda. It gives a disturbing view into how bureaucratic infighting between the F.B.I and C.I.A., and a lack of comprehension (by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence groups) of the nature of the Islamic Jihadist movement, organizations and leadership led to the intelligence failures before the Nairobi Embassy bombings in 1998, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and the 9/11 attacks.

It may seem that these events are all well-worn or tired stories by now, but I found the book (as well as the TV series) provided a fresh perspective, and some valuable new insights into the human and institutional fallibilities that allowed Al Qaeda's terrorism to carry out its most successful attacks on our country and its people. Recommended.

Book Review: American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts (2019). Chris McGreal.

This is a deeply-researched account of how the American opioid crisis began in the early 2000s. There was so much about how the opioid crisis came about that I did not know, but that I learned from this book.

It began in West Virginia, where coal miners wracked with pain from their hard work in the coal mines were offered a “cure” for their pain by local doctors, consisting of the heavily marketed new artificial opioids such as oxycontin and oxycodone. At the same time, medical practice and thought had been veering from the prohibitionist approach of the mid-twentieth century toward a more “liberal” view that it was the doctor’s job to treat pain wherever possible, using whatever pain-killing drugs were available.

Into this mix of social conditions, changing medical treatment philosophies and opportunities for profit came several Big Pharma companies, with some brand-new drugs to push and a lot of money to be made.

Soon, prescription “mills” were springing up in little towns in the coal fields, aided by a few unscrupulous physicians, and then almost overnight, billions of pills were being sold by a few rural drug stores. From there, the scourge moved outward, as Congress failed to respond to the small number of physicians and whistleblowers who raised the alarm about the addiction crisis in the making. 

McGreal does an excellent job tracing the social and political history of the opioid crisis, and describing in devastating detail the way it spread through American society and families. Recommended.

Book Review: The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google (2017). Scott Galloway.

This book provides a dire warning on how each of the "Big Four" tech companies (five, if you include Microsoft, i.e. Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple) is undermining freedom, democracy, economic fairness and other positive values by the different ways in which they mine and exploit our data and manipulate us, using tools of control that dwarf anything ever seen before.

On The John Oliver Show (on HBO) last Sunday (June 5, 2022), Oliver's main segment described two bipartisan bills being considered in Congress right now to address issues of anti-competitiveness and monopolistic practices by these same companies. The Four is excellent background reading for understanding why and how these practices are destructive to individuals, small businesses, the democratic political system and the economy, and why these proposed anti-monopolistic bills are a necessary first step in reigning these companies in.  

Galloway does a particularly good job highlighting how all the destructive aspects of these companies' activities are carried out under the guise of friendly, liberal corporate images, and aided by the seductive attractions of all the everyday conveniences, incredible tools and bright shiny objects they provide, and upon which we all depend. Recommended.

Book Review: The Fifth Risk (2018). Michael Lewis.

Lewis, who is a prolific non-fiction writer with interests and expertise in the interplay of money, statistics, business and politics (as displayed in books such as Moneyball and The Big Short), shines a light on what the administrative agencies of the U.S. government (i.e. the "Deep State") do for us as citizens and members of U.S. society.

He spotlights a number of key figures in various agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service, the Department of Commerce and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), describes what they do and why these services are so important to our success and survival as a society.  He then focuses on how the Trump Administration set out to destroy these agencies through a lack of presidential transition planning, appointment of inept, corrupt administrators, and deliberate attempts to monetize their valuable governmental functions and assets for private gain.

A disturbing and less-well-known aspect of the Trump presidency and its disasters, nicely-told and explained, and a very absorbing read.  It is also a strong counter-narrative to the cynical view that good government doesn't matter, and doesn't do anything important for us as individuals and as members of a national community.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020). Isabel Wilkerson.

This is a very compelling presentation on how the history and current state of racism against black people in the USA has all the elements of a well-developed caste system, very analogous to those of India and apartheid-era South Africa.   

One particularly horrifying set of historical facts she presents to bolster this case (of which I was unaware) is the extent to which the German Nazi leadership studied and copied the American racist caste system of the Jim Crow era against blacks, as they were making plans for their own racist campaigns against European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. 

In Wilkerson's view, Negroid features and dark skin color were deliberately used in colonial North America as arbitrary markers for the creation of a "sub-human" caste (similar to the Indian Dalits, or “untouchables”) as part of the development of the legal and moral basis for justifying slavery.   

Once firmly established, this caste system has proven remarkably tenacious over the centuries in its ability to keep re-forming and re-asserting itself, as various earlier elements of racism and race-based discrimination have been slowly outlawed or made socially unacceptable in American life.  

The author notes the manner in which this caste system was promoted to the lowest class whites, as an assurance that no matter how poor or downtrodden they were, they could always be confident that they were still of higher caste than anyone with black skin.  With this observation, she shows why lower-caste whites continue to be so resistant to any social changes (or individual achievements, such as Barack Obama's ascendancy to the presidency of the United States) that allow blacks to move to upper caste levels, and she gives examples in our contemporary social life and politics to illustrate and prove the point.  

This is a new and enlightening theory of how systemic racism against blacks has become so deeply pervasive and entrenched in American society, as a classic caste system, and shows starkly the toll that it has taken on black people, but also on the rest of our society, since the first black slaves arrived here in 1619.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice (2015). Bill Browder.

Red Notice is an autobiographical account by Browder, the grandson of a famous U.S. Communist and the son of a Harvard legal scholar, of his efforts to make his own mark in the world by becoming a hedge fund manager in the newly "free" economies of Russia and Eastern Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s.  

He succeeded in that, and quickly became very wealthy in the new "Wild West" of the post-Soviet economy.  But in the process, by expecting Russian business to be governed by the rules of fairness and transparency that are generally honored in the West, he ran afoul of Putin and the new generation of Russian oligarchs, and discovered the reality of "Russian rules", including all the sorts of dirty operations, corruption, murder and mayhem with which we have lately become so familiar.  

When one of his lawyers was imprisoned for defending him and his hedge fund, and ultimately was killed by the Russian state, it led him to fight back, leading to U.S. Congressional passage of the Magnitzky Rule, which placed personal sanctions on key Russian business and government figures, and triggered our ongoing national crisis over Putin, Trump and the Russian attacks on our political processes.  The Magnitzky Rule is prelude to the sanctions now being imposed on Russian oligarchs around the world in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Red Notice is a gripping personal story, and a foundational background piece in the complicated history of our current political moment, and our complicated relationship to the post-Soviet world of Russian politics and finance in the Putin era.  Recommended.

Book Review: Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators (2019). Ronan Farrow.

An extremely well-written, fast-paced true-life autobiographical thriller, in which the multi-talented NBC reporter and New Yorker writer describes what it took to break through the wall of lies and defensive mechanisms that had protected Harvey Weinstein and other wealthy and powerful sexual predators for decades. 

It was Farrow, along with a couple of women journalists at the New York Times, who investigated, wrote, fact-checked and finally published the story of Weinstein's predatory sexual behaviors toward women in Hollywood.  His stories played a critical role in bringing Weinstein to justice, and also helped trigger the #METOO movement that brought other powerful sexual predators in media to light.  

In his book, Farrow details how he was strung along for over a year by his supervisors and higher-level executives at NBC who were bent on undermining and burying his story.  He only gradually learned as the investigation developed of the extent of  Weinstein's ongoing active measures to protect himself, including a well-financed private media and intelligence campaign to track Farrow's progress, and prevent the story from being told. 

Along the way, Farrow also uncovered The National Enquirer's "catch and kill" tactics for protecting rich celebrities (including Donald Trump), and was himself surveilled and subjected to negative media attacks to try to derail and discourage his investigation. 

An inspirational and exciting tale of journalistic heroism, integrity and dogged persistence in tracking down and exposing the crimes of the corrupt rich and powerful men who control many of our media and entertainment businesses.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service (2021). Carol Leonnig.

Zero Fail is one of two Secret Service books I have read recently.  It is a history of the agency by a talented investigative journalist, which traces the Secret Service and its leadership from its origins in the Treasury Department, through its changing roles and capabilities as the protectors of Presidents, and its transition in the early 2000s to being one federal police agency among many in the post-9/11 Homeland Security Department.  

Leonnig is particularly interested in the major failures that shaped the agency from its inception, particularly presidential assassinations and attempts, and how the need to protect the agency in the wake of those failures helped create a closed, defensive organizational culture, which has continued to tolerate and cover up mistakes, as well as the bad behavior, institutional sexism, drunken excesses and sexual antics of agents and supervisors.  

A penetrating analysis and treasure trove of “inside secrets” from the agency which continues to have “zero fail” (in protecting the president) as the standard to which it should and must be held.   

This account concludes in near-present time, and does include coverage of Donald Trump's attempts to bend the agency to his own personal service and political purposes, in ways unlike those of any previous presidents.  This is especially relevant now, as news this week has revealed that members of the Secret Service close to Trump may have actively participated in attempts to derail the certification of the 2020 election by Congress.  Recommended.

Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America (2022). Ryan Busse.

This new non-fiction release brings an unexpected insider perspective and history to the evolution of the National Rifle Association (NRA) over the past 30 years from its longstanding traditional role as a sportsman-oriented outdoor recreational and educational organization, to its current position as one of the most influential and dangerous organizations promoting militarism, authoritarianism and extreme right wing politics in the United States.

 

Ryan Busse was raised on a Kansas farm, and grew up with traditional rural American values of patriotism, love of the outdoors, and familiarity with guns, especially hunting rifles and shotguns, which were tied in his mind and emotions to much-loved memories of youth and family.  When it came time to choose a profession, he became an early employee of Kimber of America, at that time a boutique gun maker that specialized in making fine hunting rifles, where he rose during a successful career of more than twenty years to a position as an industry award-winning vice president.  

 

Along the way, though, he witnessed and initially was part of the dramatic transformation of both the gun industry and the NRA that occurred from the 1990s to the present, into something very different and much darker than what he thought he had joined. 

 

The transformation he describes included the early use of organized internet “trolling” as a way to create fear in opponents within the NRA and the gun industry; the glamorization of recent combat veterans and their lethal equipment to build a market for selling more guns, especially high-capacity pistols and variants of the AR-15 assault rifle; skillful use of cynical marketing techniques, to legitimize sale of military-grade weapons to civilians, notably a rebranding of AR-15 variants as the MSR, or “modern sporting rifle”; and the encouragement of gun sales to what industry insiders contemptuously called “couch commandos”, that is, young civilian men with fantasies of war and a desire for a kind of “cosplay” with real weapons as an outlet for their imaginations and frustrations.    

 

Busse provides examples and insights from his own experiences about the extent to which NRA officials used and benefited from corrupt practices, to build personal fortunes, and manipulate individuals and gun companies to conform to the NRA's increasingly hard line on contentious political and social issues.   He also describes his own conflicted position and feelings, as his company, the gun industry and the NRA changed around him, and eventually became threatening to him and his family.

This is an important slice of our recent political history by an inside observer to the rise of a leading force in the American radical right of the early 21st century.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018). Anand Giridharadas.

This is a brilliant and thorough investigation of the ways in which the super-rich have appropriated the world of charitable giving as a means of feeling good about themselves, while further controlling society's options, by providing privately funded solutions and ways of thinking about social problems that never allow for real challenges to the underlying social order that benefits the wealthy.  

The author advocates for a more fair distribution of wealth, and emphasizes the importance of having representative democratic governments rather than self-appointed wealthy foundations decide how we should solve problems of poverty, climate change, disease and other major challenges to modern society.  

 

This is a perfect companion piece to Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, previously reviewed, in showing how even the "benevolent" and "generous" sides of plutocracy ultimately manipulate and distort policy, and serve the interests of the super-rich at the expense of everyone else.  Highly recommended.