The subtitle of this book is “What It Does and Why It’s Flawed.” It was edited by Hester Pierce and James Broughel and was written by them and others at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. I recommend it to anyone who has even the slightest interest in the legislative response to the financial crises that began in mid-2006. You don’t even need to read the entire book to be better informed about the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. There is a short description of what each of the sixteen “Titles” comprising the act were intended to do followed by a brief summary of why the approach is flawed. “The act requires the creation—by one count—of 398 new rules and will affect the U.S. economy by restricting or requiring specific activity.” Only a small fraction of the regulations that are required by the act have been finalized. “Assuming the remaining regulations are proportionately restrictive…Dodd-Frank would create 13,323 new restrictions in total.” Continue reading
Category Archives: Reviews
1858
Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See
This is a fine book that puts the lead-up to America’s Civil War in human terms. Bruce Chadwick presents seven stories of different figures who played roles in the politics of the time. The stories are held together by their effects on James Buchanan’s presidency. The stories alternate with chapters on Buchanan, and it is easy to skip around in the book, reading the chapters that most interest you.
Buchanan must have been the most tone deaf president in history. He refused to believe that many Americans, North and South, saw every political action through the lenses of slavery. He never understood the abolitionist passions behind the fight over Kansas becoming a state. He “ended 1858 the way that he began it, completely blind to the slavery issue that threatened to destroy the United States.” He told the nation that “the slavery crisis that had divided America for years appeared to be over.” Continue reading
Making America Crazy
Previously I reviewed the book Overtreated which explains why too much medicine is making us sicker. Robert Whitaker’s book Anatomy of an Epidemic explains why too much reliance on psychoactive drugs is making us crazier.
This seems like the right time for a book on treatments for mental illness. With today’s increased public concern about mental illness that leads to violence, evidence that our current treatments may be making the problem worse should worry us all. On a personal note, I have ties to four people who committed suicide. All were under doctors’ care when they died and had been for a long time. That seems hard to accept in the world of modern medicine. Continue reading
Many Ends of the World
Craig Childs, who is a commentator on National Public Radio, has written a strange book. Apocalyptic Planet is primarily a collection of Childs’ extreme treks, each inspired by a different view of what the Earth might become after “the end of the world” as we know it.
Various possible scenarios are represented by Childs’ travels through a desert in Mexico, crumbling mountain glaciers in the Andes, an island remnant of the land bridge that once connected Asia and North America, an arctic research station buried in snow, and other terrains. The one man-made landscape is a huge corn field of giant plants grown for industrial uses with “leaves so sharp they cut skin and cloth”. Continue reading
Case Closed
I mentioned to my brother that I felt the “Killing Kennedy” book by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard did not answer whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the single assassin of John F. Kennedy. He suggested that I read this book by Gerald Posner, which has the subtitle “Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.” I must say that I was convinced after reading the 607 page book (there are over a hundred pages of appendices, acknowledgements, notes and the index). I agree with my brother that the book gives a definitive answer that Oswald was the lone assassin. I thought the strongest evidence was that some of Oswald’s coworkers were on the floor directly beneath where he was firing out the window at the President. They all said there were three loud shots directly over their heads, the concussion from the shots knocked loose “cement” from the ceiling that filtered down on them, they heard the bolt action of the rifle worked three times, and they heard three casings hit the floor directly over their heads. There is even a picture in the book of two of the men looking out the fifth floor window during the shooting to see what was happening on the floor above them where Oswald was firing. Continue reading
The Last Voyage of Columbus
My wife expressed an interest in reading this book by Martin Dugard to get a sample of his writing beyond the “Killing” books with Bill O’Reilly. She decided she would be good with me reading it and her reading a review. The subtitle of the book is, “Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain’s Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Swordfight, Mutiny, Shipwreck, Gold, War, Hurricane, and Discovery.” I’m glad I read the book. It is filled with history and facts about Columbus, the New World, and the natives who should have chased Columbus off the instant he and his ships landed. Continue reading