Book Reviews – Page 3

Book Review: Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

December 19, 2011 by Justin Weinger

Sway is one of the first books I’ve read on human behavior from our modern era (not Freud or Kierkegaard or a classical philosopher like Boethius). It’s a mainstream, pop culture look at why people behave in irrational and illogical ways so often in life. The ideas in this book ranged from the common (unwillingness to sell a stock that is plummeting in price) to the rare and tragic (the worst aviation crash in history that killed 583 passengers in Tenerife). The authors, Ori and Rom Brafman apply several theories to each situation in order to shed light on it. Here are just a couple examples:

Loss Aversion

You may not have heard of the Tenerife crash (or did you just watch Breaking Bad?), but it remains the worst crash in aviation history, with 583 deaths. The unexpected part, as the Brafmans explain, is that the pilot who caused the crash was highly experienced and head of KLM’s safety program. He even appeared in KLM advertisements thanks to his good looks and excellent flying record. It seems unthinkable that someone like Captain Van Zanten would take off without takeoff clearance, but he did. And it was the powerful momentum of loss aversion (he wanted to avoid a potential loss – which was a certain overnight stay on Tenerife if he could not takeoff before his mandated rest period began) along with several other factors that the authors explore that swayed Van Zanten into making such a dangerous decision. As the first story in Sway, it is linked back to often as other ideas like commitment (we are committed to ideas and strategies we have always taken before), and greater perceived losses, can make us even more loss-averse.

Value Attribution and Diagnosis Bias

Another powerful idea in the book that is relevant to all of us changing the way we spend our money is value attribution. It’s defined as “the tendency to imbue someone or something with certain qualities based on perceived value, rather than on objective data.” Think of it as the Groupon effect. Have you ever noticed that when you get something for an incredible discount, you start to doubt it? Maybe it wasn’t worth that much after all or there’s something wrong with it! There are several examples given in the book, from anthropologists rejecting important discoveries to Joshua Bell performing on the steps of a DC Metro station that will surprise you, but not by much. We’re all guilty of it.

Diagnosis bias is a derivative of value attribution and refers to the phenomenon where we continue to use our initial value judgement of someone or something long after we made them. The most haunting example in the book was of an ER room that continued to send a mother with a sick child home because they perceived her to be a prototypical over-worrier. You want to think that ER doctors and nurses would not allow their judgments to get in the way of their duties, but that is exactly what happened. This can happen often in our daily life- the way we view the people we are closest to, the activities that we think are beneficial or important but in fact may not be (like using a credit card for emergencies) and this chapter can help you reconsider some of your most ingrained approaches to life.

Recommendation

I recommend this book for anyone who wants an entertaining, informative read on human behavior. The book discusses psychology, social phenomenons as well as culture and economics with ease. Besides the ideas discussed above, there are chapters that consider what our ideas of fairness and equal compensation are and how those change in different cultures. Some examples were not as in-depth as they could have been, the ideas of the book will stay with you and you may find you are able to ask yourself “What exactly am I thinking here? Maybe I should reconsider before I jump into this.” It’s infotainment at its best. I approach books like Sway not with the idea of “Oh, look at us people, we’re so screwed up” but more of a “People are so fascinating, we think alike a lot more than it would appear at first glance”.

Let me know if you get a chance to read it!

Book Review: Green with Envy by Shira Boss

November 9, 2011 by Justin Weinger

I am doing more regular book reviews at American Debt Project, and Green With Envy: Why Keeping Up with the Joneses is Keeping Us in Debt was right on topic. I read constantly, but never many topical books. You know those books with paragraph-long titles? Like Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party or Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History? Hello, too many words, I almost blacked out. (But Griftopia sounds interesting.)

Besides their rambling titles, topical books often seem short-sighted to me. I prefer to read the classics in non-fiction that dissect important events in history, like All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (OK, so that has an extended title too, but I highly recommend it). Books that are written about things that are happening right now are usually topics better analyzed in newspapers and magazines. But I picked up Green with Envy because it caught my eye from the first sentence: “It started even before the couple next door moved in. The comparison. The envy.”

Green with Envy is not full of advice nor is it an in-depth analysis of our society and its relationship with money. It is about our relationship with money, but on a personal, individual level. Beginning with herself, Boss examines the personal stories of different types of people in varying financial situations. I was impressed by her level of honesty about openly envying her neighbor’s Bloomingdale’s packages that arrived on a daily basis. Her neighbors of the same age seem to have it way better than Boss and her husband, who are deep in student loan debt and living on one income. But she soon gets the real story as she begins writing this book, and her new neighbors very openly discuss the details of their not-so-perfect finances. From there, she details the story of another couple in Florida who seemed to moving up and up until they were in over their heads. This particular couple ended up in bankruptcy court but there was no happy ending where they reined in their spending and happily lived on less: Boss eloquently captures how they continued to envy their more comfortable friends and neighbors.

A surprising section of the book was dedicated to analyzing the personal finances of the Representatives of U.S. Congress. When the book was published, the salary of a Representative was $160,000 per year (it’s now at $174,000). While many Representatives and Senators are independently wealthy and could work without a salary (check this out for the wealthiest members of Congress), there are members who have only their salary. At first, this section seems ridiculous. Who cares if Congress doesn’t receive any housing allowance for their residence in Washington or travel stipends for their family to visit them at the Capitol? These fat cats have it made and they’ll have it even more made when they take their lobbyist gig after congress paying $500,000 a year! But as the stories of Congressmen with high credit card balances continued, it became clear that this wasn’t about pity or empathy for the poor little old Congressmen who have to make it on less than $200K per year. It was about revealing that there is always a set of Joneses to compare yourself to, and there will always be those who are doing better and doing more. The comparisons will never stop and they are challenging for those in the public eye who have to maintain an image of order and perfection at any cost.

Green with Envy also devotes a section to Baby Boomers, who have been the most prosperous generation of recent history, although that doesn’t mean many of their finances are not in disarray either. This generation, like many of us, hasn’t planned for retirement or planned for a time when they would be earning less.

The last chapter of the book, which does delve into a few ideas and pieces of advice, begins with Boss and her husband training for a marathon. The training became more about mental training than just physical training, and some of the mental training techniques used by marathon trainers could easily be applied to other great challenges in life. Consider:

The marathon folks teach the technique of using the phrase “but it doesn’t matter” after every negative thought or disappointment. As the authors suggest, I tried out this technique in other parts of life, at first for little things like when the line at the grocery store was taking forever (But it doesn’t matter!), and then for more seemingly significant things, like the neighbors jetting to Tahoe for the weekend (But it definitely doesn’t matter!). In this way, you start training and shaping your mindset so that you can start making life what you want it to be.

I tried it out already in my own life and loved it (not that I’m going to be running any marathons any time soon- those people are crazy! Maybe a half-marathon).

Green with Envy is a great read on our perceptions of our own money and other people’s money. It considers not only how we view money but how we view work, whether we would work if we didn’t need the money and how people who do have millions are not necessarily fulfilled (especially if it is inherited and not earned). I really enjoyed how the author took uncomfortable revelations to a new level, and she never excluded her own situations from being put on display. I thought this last quote from the book fit the idea of American Debt Project about understanding and talking about our finances:

In stepping forward to make changes in how you think about your personal financial situation and how we talk to one another about it, in confronting the taboo, keep in mind something the anthropologist Margaret Mead said: “We are our culture.” The taboo lives because we are keeping it alive by following it. When we act boldly, when we make our own decisions about what we’ll talk about and how we’ll view things, we improve our own culture.

Bold, baby. She is Shira, hear her roar.

(Note: Shira Boss wrote this book in 2006 and the paperback version that came out in 2007 is entitled Green with Envy: A Whole New Way to Look at Financial (Un)Happiness. I believe the content remained the same and my review is of the 2006 first edition.)

Book Review:: McMafia by Misha Glenny

October 6, 2011 by Justin Weinger

I’ve been slacking on blogging but only because I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Well, that and the fact that yesterday morning I was crossing a busy intersection in LA and I see a van speeding towards me really fast off a left turn and all I can do is put my hands out to motion him to stop and he ended up braking just in time, but not quite in time enough to keep me from getting some bruises on my shins. I got hit by a car. Holy shit. It was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’ve been posted up for the past two days pondering my own mortality, and it didn’t help that Steve Jobs, who many people thought was immortal, just passed away. Rest in peace, Steve.

So my run-in with a beat-up old van in a beat-up LA neighborhood reminded me that life is short and awesome and I’ve got to do with it as I will. I want to be a writer who covers the strange and the ignored in this world, the things that are crazy and complex and Good Morning America is not going to be doing a segment on anytime soon. As I’ve said from the beginning, crime and corruption is one of those topics.

Book Review: McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny

When I saw McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (Vintage) while browsing through Amazon, I was smitten. A look at crime across the globe and its growing influence and sophistication? Wow! It took me a few months to get through it, since the book is quite dense, not in the manner of writing, but because of sheer volume of information and analysis, and it’s not bedtime reading. However, having finished it, I would recommend it as a must-read book for anyone who wants to learn more about how our world works. Glenny is an investigative reporter and journalist, which makes the book read like a very long, interesting first-hand article that would fit in at Wired magazine or The New York Times. Starting out in Eastern Bloc nations after the fall of Communism in the late 80s, Glenny investigates why organized crime became so powerful in these nations and continues to be so. A weak government or lack of government at all creates a vacuum for protection rackets and organized crime, and both of these thrived in Russia and the former Eastern Bloc following the fall of Communism. There, a few oligarchs became superrich by effectively transferring the assets of the state into personal wealth. And they used the protection rackets to help them who in turn also became crazy rich and powerful. Glenny covers events that took place in the region from this perspective and it will be very different from any historical coverage you’ve read previously.

Glenny covers patterns of crime, claiming that the mainstays of all organized crime around the globe are narcotics, cigarettes, people trafficking, prostitution, energy brokering and arms dealing. But there is much, much more to the book as he investigates Africa and especially South Africa, the Middle East and the money laundering capital of the world (Dubai), Colombia and finally Japan and China. The topics are so broad, from BC Bud in Vancouver being trucked to the States, to the growing threat of cybercrime and the shift from ego hackers (the ones who plant viruses in your computer that shut everything down or pop up 1,000 windows) to criminal hackers who go after bank accounts and sensitive information.

In short, reading this book changed my understanding of how the world runs, what has influenced the development of countries and regions, and what my own consumption does for organized crime. I just want to end with this quote from the book by Lee Timofeev, which sheds light on the failure on the war on drugs:

Prohibiting a market does not mean destroying it. Prohibiting a market means placing a prohibited but dynamically developing market under the total control of criminal corporations. Moreover, prohibiting a market means enriching the criminal world with hundreds of billions of dollars by giving criminals a wide access to public goods which will be routed by addicts into the drug traders’ pockets.

I haven’t read a lot in this genre of investigative non-fiction, and some people criticize this book as trying to take on too much. But it’s a great place to start if you are interested in the large problems facing people and societies around the world.

Check out this in-depth review by the 52 Week Project. (Then check out the whole blog – it’s all about a new idea a week.)

Tom Wolfe Proclaims No Amount of Money is Ever Enough

September 13, 2011 by Justin Weinger

Is it wrong to say that Tom Wolfe is an author obsessed with money? Or more like, obsessed with money, power, vanity and sex? Which is to say he’s one of my favorite authors. Tom Wolfe writes in the prized way that great writers do: making you feel as if you know the situation, the character and the weight and intensity of their emotions as the plot unravels in each of his 600-plus-paged novels. And like Gob on the show Arrested Development, he also happens to be unable to describe a man’s suit without including the price of it ($1,800). Most notably in Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man In Full, Wolfe often focuses on the details of salaries, expenses, and exact dollar amounts as they pertain to characters who are incredibly wealthy or heartbreakingly poor. There’s no denying it-Tom Wolfe writes stuff that is juicier than the drama of the The Real Housewives series. I am rapt by his descriptions of people of different socioeconomic levels, and his mastery of character for each and every person who appears in his novels. I always thought this classic inner dialogue of Sherman McCoy sounded like the same conversation we all have in our head. Enjoy!*

“I’m already going broke on a million dollars a year! The appalling figures came popping up into his brain. Last year his income had been $980,000. But he had to pay out $21,000 a month for the $1.8 million loan he had taken out to buy the apartment. What was $21,000 a month to someone making a million a year? That was the way he had thought of it at the time-and in fact, it was merely a crushing, grinding burden-that was all! It came to $252,000 a year, none of it deductible, because it was a personal loan, not a mortgage. (The cooperative boards in Good Park Avenue Buildings like his didn’t allow you to take out a mortgage on your apartment.) So, considering the taxes, it required $420,000 in income to pay the $252,000. Of the $560,000 remaining of his income last year, $44,400 was required for the apartment’s monthly maintenance fees; $116,000 for the house on Old Drover’s Mooring Lane in Southampton ($84,000 for mortgage payment and interest, $18,000 for heat, utilities, insurance and repairs, $6,000 for lawn and hedge cutting, $8,000 for taxes.[…more expenses I don’t feel like typing out…] The tab for furniture and clothes had come to about $65,000; and there was little hope of reducing that, since Judy was, after all, a decorator and had to keep things up to par. The servants…came to $62,000 a year…the abysmal truth was that he had spent more than $980,000 last year. Well, obviously he could cut down here and there-but not nearly enough-if the worst happened! -Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)

*Dear Tom Wolfe: I had to use an extended quote from your book as an educational piece for my blog. Whether or not you mean to, you get personal finance way better than Suze Orman ever did. Thank you for always shedding a light on the human condition, especially the human condition of rich American city-dwellers in the late 20th century whom you believe are generally rotten, racist and prone to “rutting” with any hot young thing who will have them.

Book Review: Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges

July 25, 2011 by Justin Weinger

Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion — Hedges has got the Good, the Bad and the Dirty.

Have you heard of Chris Hedges? The dude’s a rebel! A former New York Times reporter with a Master of Divinity designation from Harvard rebel. On a radio interview in July 2011, he talked about how he was “never a careerist” because those reporters who were closest to the most powerful figures in the government, military or whatever would also generally acquiesce to those figures of power. This was never his interest, as he says, and it shows in his work. His stories in the New York Times were never the “big” policy pieces, but more concerned with talking to the soldiers on the ground and their stories from the field rather than decision-makers at CENTCOM. Overall, I found Empire of Illusion to be a dark, probing look into what is taking hold of America and its citizens.

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle is Hedges’ second-most recent book, published in 2009. I found much of Hedges’ assessment of American society and culture (or its lack thereof) to be fascinating and disturbing. The book warns in the most dire tone of the imminent end of the American Empire, which can sometimes feel downright uncomfortable for those of us raised on the snarky and cheeky view of politics a la Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Hedges touches on the state of affairs in literacy, love, education, happiness and the country in general, and his overall assessment is that we have been cast down the wrong path by those in power, and that power continues to become more and more concentrated at the detriment of the majority of the people. More simply, Hedges says we’re all getting stupider, the institutions that once served the people are a joke, and pornography is some twisted, freaky business. Below are a few great quotes from each section of the book, which was divided by the different illusions (and delusions) we suffer under.

The Illusion of Literacy: We’ve rewarded reality television, fake wrestling, and the ostentatiously rich.

The cult of self dominates our cultural landscape. This cult has within it the classical traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity, and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, and manipulation, and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. This is, of course, the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism.

The Illusion of Love: I want to believe the best of Hedges, but I am not sure why he “had” to attend the Adult Video News (AVN) Awards in Las Vegas to write this section, which is the biggest event of the pornography industry, complete with convention, after-parties and every big name in porn in attendance. His intention is to expose the violence and cruelty that women are exposed to within these films and this section is more graphic than a Bret Easton Ellis novel. You might skip these detailed descriptions of violent, commercialized and soulless sex, but even creepier is the tale of the man who lives with eight silicone dolls:

Dr. Z hides his hobby from most of his friends. He keeps the dolls locked in his bedroom closet. He positions them around the house, including in his bed, when he is alone. He shops for their clothing. He poses them for photo shoots. He carefully applies their makeup. And he talks to them. He began using blow-up dolls when he was married…He kept his habit secret from his wife. He is now divorced. “Hey,” he says, “I wasn’t cheating.”

The Illusion of Wisdom: This section focused on the shift in higher education away from true intellectual inquiry and the fact that even the our elite, private universities are focused on creating systems managers and not people who are going to think critically and challenge the systems in place. Having attended an elite, private university myself, I had to assess my own education in a different light than the warm-and-fuzzy views I’ve given my school since graduation. Business has become the most popular major (also my major) and careers on Wall Street are some of the most sought after positions for new graduates (also true on my campus where the big Wall Street firms came to recruit, wine, and dine the business, economics and accounting majors). Hedges sums up the future imagined by these kinds of graduates as dim:

They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of how to replace a failed system with a new one. They are petty, timid, and uncreative bureaucrats superbly trained to carry out systems management. They see only piecemeal solutions that will satisfy the corporate structure. Their entire focus is numbers, profits, and personal advancement…The human consequences never figure into their balance sheets. The democratic system, they believe, is a secondary product of the free market-which they slavishly serve.”

The Illusion of Happiness: Hedges cites corporate culture and positive psychology as tools that are used to promote social conformity within society, the workplace, and every other institution. I think anyone who has worked for any company with over 50 employees can relate to this section, where an example of a meeting held at FedEx Kinko’s reminded me of Office Space. A “woman from corporate” brings toys, candy and markers to get the employees involved and keeps an upbeat attitude even though the employees are initally reluctant to get involved. In the end, this scene feels uncomfortable because the employees are being “spun” to think they are happy to work for the company.

Positive psychology, like celebrity culture, the relentless drive to consume, and the diversionary appeals of mass entertainment, feeds off the unhappiness that come from isolation and the loss of community.

The Illusion of America: Hedges looks back at America with nostalgia, because, he says, what is still here is not really America anymore. The quote I want to cite here actually comes from economist Jared Diamond, who lists five factors that lead to social decay:

1) a failure to understand and to prevent causes of environmental damage; 2) climate change, 3) depredations by hostile neighbors; 4) the inability of friendly neighbors to continue trade; and 5) finally, how the society itself deals with the problems raised by the first four factors.

In case you were wondering like I was, depredation means an act of attacking or plundering. Although I think that the depredation going on in the United States is mostly carried on by internal forces.

Recommendation

Overall, I thought Empire of Illusion was a great read. I learned about some disturbing trends in each section that Hedges focused on, and the overall message that the people are being distracted and entertained with spectacle and noise while the country and the environment is plundered is definitely a thesis I can agree with. But I’m always weary of books that prophesy apocalypse and offer nothing in return to a reader. Although Hedges ends on a note of hope (“The power of love is greater than the power of death”), he doesn’t offer a path to readers which I think would include education that encourages critical thinking, less apathy overall within the United States, and an inclusive society that offers a larger percentage of people a path to a middle class lifestyle. I guess in the end, I have an unbounded (and maybe unreasonable) optimism that’s hard to dampen, even though I respect Hedges’ way of presenting the story.

Have you read any works by Chris Hedges? What do you guys think?