Book Review Friday 9/5/08

Book: Crunch; Why do I Feel So Squeezed?
Author: Jared Bernstein
Pages: 218

This was a truly nerdy economic book that I had high hopes for. Initially, I was elated. Finally a book that would answer my questions without sounding condescending or inducing sleep. And it lived up to this expectation for a while. But then, it started to fail. It got boring. And it helped a lot that the author paraphrased the answer to each question in a one to two sentence "crunchpoint" at the end of the chapter that aided in finishing the book fast. No need to read the author's ramblings. Just flip to the crunchpoint and get the answer.

The most interesting section in the book was definitely the section on healthcare (cue: snores). It shed a lot of light on a subject that is certainly hot right now. And finally someone could explain it to me so that I actually understood. Of course, no solutions were really mentioned, but now I have a slightly firmer grasp of what exactly is wrong with our healthcare system and it actually made sense.

My biggest complaint of the book: I had thought that the author was unbias politically, but it became quite evident that was not the case. If I could, I'd like to caution people who want to write books that will stand the test of time and become pieces that are referred to in different generations: stop writing stupid and pointless attacks on the current Bush administration. We all know that things could probably have gone better, but in 50 years, no one is going to understand your little jabs. No one will get your sarcasm. No one will care. And that could very well be the reason your book won't be used to uphold economic principals. Too much criticism of one president's term in a succession of corrupt politicians. Give it a rest.

There, I've said my piece. Perhaps, if you were to read this along side an interesting fiction piece and not try to digest it all in one sitting, it'd be a tad bit more interesting.